11 March 2012 The Dreaded Drake Passage

Speed 14.5 knots (kts)
Course 67 degrees
Location Straits of Magellan (-52.494935, -70.01876)
Depth 34 m

We are finally on the move! However, the weather is a bit rough and most of the people on board are feeling a bit nauseous right about now. The seas are supposed to get worse the next couple of days. About halfway through today I finally took a non-drowsy Dramamine to deal with my own queasy stomach.

Drake PassageStrait, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between Tierra del Fuego and the South Shetland Islands. Located about 100 mi (160 km) north of the Antarctic Peninsula, it is 600 mi (1,000 km) wide.

Over the next two days we'll be traveling through the Straits of Magellan. The picture below shows the actual path our boat has traveled so far. At the top is the bottommost tip of South America and at the bottom is the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Look for the red line at the top left of the screen. We are currently going north on that line and will be heading out through the opening to the east into the Atlantic Ocean before heading south.

The water between Chile at the top and the Antarctic Peninsula below is known as the Drake PassageStrait, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between Tierra del Fuego and the South Shetland Islands. Located about 100 mi (160 km) north of the Antarctic Peninsula, it is 600 mi (1,000 km) wide.. This is the place where the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean come together and has some of the roughest seas in the entire world. So far the weather looks okay, but scientists and crew members have some horror stories from previous journeys. Even with relatively good weather, the seas are already choppy and the boat is rolling a lot more than it did before.

There are a lot of superstitions in the maritime world and one of them involves rubbing the toe on a statue in Punta Arenas before getting onboard. This is supposed to grant us good luck in our voyage across the Drake and an assurance that we will return to Chile.

At the top of this statue is the infamous Portuguese explorer Magellan. However, the toe belongs to a member of the Selk'nam tribe who are from the Tierra del Fuego area. I will leave it to my students back at June Jordan to dissect some of the sociocultural issues involved in this superstition.

In the meantime, I'll probably be taking off a couple days from blogging. It's hard to look at computer screens when the boat is moving up and down and side to side. Don't worry, I'll be back soon.