Day 2 - Antarctica - The Drake Shake (part 2)

We woke up to an announcement that included a weather report and the realization that the Drake Shake was only just beginning and the ride was likely going to get worse.  We headed down to the massive buffet breakfast – again, people were piling their plates knowing we were in for a ride.  This was our first experience walking on a rocking ship and this early in the game, it was more funny than scary.  Feeling a tiny bit dizzy, but no nausea.  I believe dizziness is a side effect of the Scop patch.

You absolutely cannot just stand up straight and people look like a bunch of drunks walking around bumping into things as the ship rocks back and forth.  And if you look at someone head on while they walk, they are usually leaning sideways to keep their balance.  You always have to be holding onto something and you just sort of move back and forth bumping into walls.  The staff has mostly mastered the “anchor your feet and sway” technique, but that is only for when you are standing still.  Personally, I follow the three points rule – make sure to always have three points of contact – 2 feet, 1 hand or 1 foot, 2 hands.  The ship is moving side to side a LOT.  (See Video on Facebook)

The staff on this ship has been amazing.  If you look like you have a question, someone will come running over to help you.  The staff was all over the dining room offering to carry food to the tables or bring you anything so you didn’t have to worry about falling or bumping into things.  For me, the industrial sized toaster was the thing to avoid since it was in a high danger zone.  I’ve decided that the danger zones are the areas where you need to traverse space but there is nothing to hold onto.  Which means the toaster is just waiting for a wave to roll me right into it!  You start to get used to the walking – mapping out a path that has enough things to hold onto or grab onto while walking, and where there are danger zones, you time the waves and make a run for it.

Leaving the dining room, we started to notice empty barf bags tucked all over the ship.  Behind every hand railing and on every table so you always had something within reach. 

All in all, though, we seem to be adapting well.  Those Scop patches behind the ear are doing their job. 

Most of today is about acclimating to the motion and going to presentations the naturalists provide throughout the day.  We attended the 9:30am discussion on penguins and then the 10:30am briefing for anyone who might want to try stand-up paddle boarding.  I was starting to feel a tiny bit dizzy and since there was not much else happening other than lunch, I figured the safest place to be was in bed – the rocking motion is much easier when lying flat, plus, I was still tired since I hadn’t slept much last night.

We were lying in bed just chilling when all of a sudden, the rocking back and forth got really bad and our furniture started to move.  We both sat up and just watched.  Waves usually come in sets of 3 or 4, each one getting a little bigger than the last.  By the time the 2^nd wave came through, our table and chairs were knocked over and getting tossed from one side of the cabin to the other.  By the third wave, I’m yelling at Damon to get the camera as our closet flew open and our clothes were tossed onto the floor and we were rolling back and forth uncontrollably on the bed - luckily I have a partial wall on my side, but Damon started to fly off the bed but the caught himself by wedging his foot against a wall; and by the fourth wave, then entirety of our cabin, which had been tossed repeatedly from one side of our cabin to the other, finally settled in a tangled pile – furniture, clothes, electronics – basically anything that had not been nailed to the floor.  (See Video on Facebook)

You can hear on the video that while I am calmly speaking profanities over the situation, we were both still laughing – hard not to as the whole experience was so surreal.  Within minutes, we had staff members knocking on our door to make sure we were okay while we cleaned up the mess.  The sad part of the experience was that it was so close to lunchtime – the tables in the dining room had been pre-set with glassware and all of the food had been put out.  The rocking was so bad that the entire dining room had been destroyed.  We didn’t see it, but we heard the glassware and plates had broken and all of the food had been tossed back and forth.  The bar area in the main lounge was also wrecked - lots of glassware and bottles broken.  Given what our room looked like, I can only imagine with those areas looked like.  Because everything didn’t just fall and break – it fell, broke, and then got tossed from one side of the room to another. 

When we ultimately left our cabin, and met up with people to hear other stories and learn what had happened, we found out that these were “rogue waves” and hit us from behind and the side.  The standard waves we’ve been encountering have been 5 meters.  They estimated the rogue waves at 12 meters.  That is more than 36 feet.  The ship’s normal list had been 10 degrees in the 5-meter swells.  These waves put us at a 25-degree list.  The most this ship has ever done is a 35-degree list.  We also learned that most of our trip has been an 8 or 9 on the Beaufort scale, which measures wind and sea conditions on a scale of 1-12.  We later looked up the chart and the set of rogue waves would have got us to an 11 on the scale.  At this point, I feel we can officially claim we have survived the Drake Shake.  

Lunch, obviously, was canceled and they served basic sandwiches in the lounge.  While I wasn’t feeling nauseous or sick, I was still  a little dizzy (probably from the meds), plus, given the rocking and my general clumsiness, I don’t trust myself walking around, so Damon grabbed a few sandwiches for us and we ate in the cabin.  My plan is to stay in bed for as long as the seas are rough!  Nice and safe there.  Lots of padding when I’m tucked into the bed.

Given the rough seas, most of the afternoon presentations were canceled to ensure passenger safety, and it probably goes without saying that the outer decks were closed.  We lounged around for a few hours and eventually around 4pm got up for afternoon tea.  The lunch had been rather sparse given the situation and I was starving.  So, we made our way down, had a snack, then went in for the photography presentation followed by the daily briefing. 

We talked to some other people to find out where everyone was during the big wave – one guy at our table had been standing in his cabin and had been tossed so hard into the closet that they thought he might have a concussion – he showed us some scrapes and bruises from his repeated journey from one side of the room to another.  We heard from the staff member who runs the gift shop (which we had been in earlier that day).  Apparently, there had been two staff members in the gift shop.  The joke they made was that they were playing superman during the waves, literally flying through the air with the entire contents of the gift shop flying with them.  She showed us before and after pictures and it was sheer destruction.  A few other couples we spoke to who had been near the gift shop corroborated that they were truly flying.  

(NOTE:  I was able to get a video of the gift shop destruction and knowing that everyone was okay, it is absolutely hilarious as it was going on during a presentation.  The presenter remained very calm and balanced while in the background you can see the gift shop getting destroyed.  If you look close, you can see Erin getting tossed around in the gift shop).  (See Video on Facebook).

My stay in bed plan seems pretty good.  Luckily, the only major injury we heard of was a staff member who I think was cut by glass in the dining area, but nothing too serious. 

By the time dinner rolled around at 7:30, the dining room was back on its feet and we had a delicious dinner followed by another presentation on shipboard superstitions at 9pm – it seems that to avoid bad luck, there should be no pictures of horses (I’ve noticed multiple in the ship’s art), no bananas (I see them at most meals), no whistling, no changing the ship’s name (ours has been changed at least once), no saying the “T” word (you know, that ship that hit an iceberg), apparently women are bad luck (not much we can do about that) and no clinking glasses during cheers (oops – everyone was doing that, too).  So here’s to hoping that ship superstitions are not real…  Eventually, we headed back to our cabin for an early retreat.  Damon has a cold and is suffering silently, so we are trying to get him as much sleep as possible before we get to the fun stuff.

On a very positive note, despite the “Drake Shake” experience, neither of us have been sick yet and I feel (hope) that the worst is behind us, at least on the way to Antarctica.  The way home… we’ll deal with that later.