Rites of passage in the Drake Passage

These past two days, we celebrated –at least– two rites of passage on the open ocean: the relatively slow spatial movement from Antarctica back to South America, and the passage at midnight from the year 2012 to 2013. The careful reader will have noticed that we hinted at more possible passages…

Of course, having been to remote and pristine lands like the Falklands/Malvinas Islands, South Georgia and Antarctica leaves a deep impression on us, and in a way, it is nice and appropriate to have some time during the crossing of the Drake Passage, to recapitulate and put our recent experiences in perspective.

The same introspection applies to the passage from one year to the next; and it so happens that this time, we celebrated this rite on board a ship in the middle of –probably- the most violent seas in the planet – and thankfully, they were in a celebratory mood, too, as they were remarkably calm during our whole trip.

Yet another rite of passage was sailing from the Pacific into the Atlantic Ocean, which we did this afternoon; and in doing so, we are now entitled to wear an earring, as true “kap hoorniers”, or those who successfully rounded the infamous Cape Horn and survived to tell the tale.

Now, we’re slowly sailing back to port and to ordinary life – which will certainly be rather extraordinary after the unusual things we experienced during this journey and now carry in our hearts and minds; we have been through a rite of passage.

Living on the edge

… on the edge of the ice, that is. Which is exactly what we have done for the past three days! Our original plan was to sail from South Georgia to the South Orkney Islands, but we were not able to do it because these isolated islands were completely surrounded by pack ice, as you can see from the ice charts of the day:

Of course, Fram’s hull is reinforced to be able to navigate through a bit of floating ice, but it definitely cannot traverse solid pack ice, which is what we have been sailing past for the last several days. The edge of the pack ice makes for very beautiful and interesting scenery, but it is best observed from afar: let’s not forget that all too often Antarctic expeditions turned sour when the ships were engulfed by the ferocious grip of ice, which tore its frigid claws into their hulls…

Plan B was to skip South Orkney and sail directly to Elephant Island; but of course, this being an expedition cruise and Antarctica being a place famous for dramatic climatic changes, plans are something to deviate from. But even if we know this, we were completely unprepared for what awaited us: yesterday’s ice charts and satellite images showed that the ice that had previously surrounded South Orkney, had now flowed all around Elephant Island, making it impossible for us to reach it.

It was also remarkable to see from the satellite images, that some of the many icebergs migrating out of the Weddell Sea are 5-6 times bigger than Elephant and South Orkney Islands. That is, we could probably not reach them easily, even if we were on board an icebreaker!

So, on to plan C… Which meant a HUGE detour around the ice to be able to reach the South Shetland Islands, where we hope to make a landing tomorrow. It is always sobering to remember who the true ruler is around Antarctica; it certainly isn’t mankind…