Our first night on the Drake was not too bad – we had some
mild rolling around, but nothing these now seasoned ocean goers couldn’t
handle. I’m back to walking like a drunk
and I always make sure to hold on with two hands when walking anywhere – no need
to get cocky. When we headed down for
breakfast, we noticed that the barf bags were loaded up all over the ship
again. Not much reassuring about that,
but so far we are good.
Today is just a lazy day – we attended a few programs, but
for the most part, it is an eat, nap, watch movies kind of day. At about 3:30, we all got called down for an
“impromptu overview” of weather and goings on for tomorrow. Since anything impromptu is out of the
ordinary, I figured the weather was going to change and be much worse than we
expected, or we were moving so quickly due to the moderately calm waters that
we might make it back to Ushuaia a day early.
The weather patterns are predicted using color overlays on
top of a map. Blue/Green = good; Orange
= okay; Pink/Red/Maroon = very bad. The
first screen shot was saw was conditions now – all green, all good. Then we saw the prediction for tomorrow
afternoon into tomorrow night as we approached the Beagle Channel. The channel, which is the last 5 hours to
Ushuaia, is protected, so the goal is to get to that point before the red hits. The map showed us heading straight into all
red and maroon at exactly the wrong time and it did not appear there would be
any way around it once we got going. You
see screen shots like that and just get sort of a sinking feeling because you
have no choice and nowhere else to go.
Nothing like knowing you are aiming for hurricane force winds and
massive ocean swells.
Our captain has obviously been well appraised of weather
patterns for days, which explains why we spent our last day in the Shetlands –
ultimately cutting a half day from our trip back. We’ve been charging full steam ahead at a
brisk 14.5 knots to try to beat the storm that sits between us and Ushuaia.
We also found out in the briefing there is a medical
emergency on board – we never found out who or what the emergency was, but our
choices, as explained by the expedition leader, were to turn around and go 24
hours back to the peninsula where there is one island (King George Island) that
has a landing strip so the person could be airlifted back to the mainland, or,
we could make a run for Ushuaia and hopefully be there in 24 hours. The captain felt it was better to make a run
to Ushuaia than to turn around and go back to AA where they could do a
helicopter evac. So right now, it looks
like pending any major weather shifts, we will make it back to Ushuaia early
and avoid the converging storms.
Dinner was uneventful but the swells were getting much
bigger. I didn’t feel nauseous, but the
rolling always feels worse if you are standing or moving around. We opted to skip the last evening presentation
and stay in bed watching movies. You
still get the rolling around, but for some reason, there is no dizziness when
lying down. A mostly uneventful day and while I wouldn’t call it the
Drake Lake, it was certainly a much calmer ride on the way back.
DAY 9:
I’m writing this last post at 7am the day before we
are supposed to disembark. Today was
supposed to be our second full day at sea and we were supposed to arrive in
Ushuaia tomorrow morning, but overnight, we made it into the Beagle Channel before
the massive storm hit (halle-freaking-luyah!) and it looks like we should get
to Ushuaia before lunchtime – nearly one entire day before we were supposed
to. Not sure what they have in store for
us today, but I assume they will let us live on the ship while docked since we
don’t really have anywhere else to go until tomorrow. Hard to believe this adventure is almost
over. Sigh.
To gain some perspective on our two Drake crossings, you can
see on the GPS tracker how on the way there, we were changing position to make
sure we were always heading into the waves whereas on the way back, you can see
that we made a perfectly straight shot back, saving a ton of time. It is pretty obvious where we got hit with the rogue wave on the way out...
We arrived “near” Ushuaia around 10 or 11am but much like an
early arrival at O’Hare, our “gate” wasn’t ready, so we had to Anchor a few
hundred feet from the dock waiting to get cleared by customs and for a spot to
open where we could park. Parking a 159-foot
ship is fun to watch – we just got parallel to the spot and slid in
sideways. Nice to have those side thrusters! By about 2pm, we were docked and given
permission to get off the ship if we chose to do.
It is very strange to be back in civilization, so we chose
to stay on the ship for a while, and then the lure of Wifi got us moving. We made it to the security check point, maybe
a 5-minute walk, in gale force winds (remember that weather picture???) The security area was a tiny building on the
dock, but it had free WiFi. We loaded up
our work email (ugh) and basically said “f-this” and turned around and walked
back to the ship. On the 5-minute walk
back, the waves were hitting the dock and spray was blowing everywhere, so in
addition to the wind, we were getting hit with sea water. Safely back on the ship we, you guessed it,
napped and watched movies.
The ship was conducting the normal presentations as if we
were still at sea, so we did attend a few more presentations on climate change
and the other Quark expeditions we might be interested in. We had our final champagne toast on the back
deck with the captain, ate our last dinner, and then went back to the lounge
for the trip highlight – our wonderful ship photographer (Nikki) had put
together a spectacular slide show for us comprised of pictures and videos that
we had all submitted along with pictures that she had taken. We will have it in a few weeks and I will
most definitely post it – a professional vision of what we did over 8 days in a
15-minute video. We laughed, we
cried. There was a slo-mo video of a
penguin pooping (I’m not the only one obsessed). You’ll just have to wait and see.
We went to bed early as there was not much else to do
(although I heard the young single crowd partied until 4am). We woke up at 6, showered, packed, ate
breakfast and were off the ship by 8. We
met up with Martin & Camila for a final breakfast before heading to the
airport for the 28-hour trip home.
And with that, our unbelievable adventure is over and we
look forward to accumulating enough vacation time and United miles in the very
near future to continue our travels to the far ends of the earth. While the North Pole and polar bears hold
some allure, I swear our next trip will not involve ice, snow or long
underwear.
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