Drake Passage
After leaving Ushuaia, Argentina, known as the Southernmost city in the world, the National Geographic Explorer made her way south into the Beagle Channel and then the Drake Passage. Once the ship left the protection of the Beagle, named for the H.M.S Beagle the ship that carried Charles Darwin around the Americas, she was out and into the teeth of the Drake Passage. This waterway gets its reputation from the over 2,000 shipwrecks that dot the Chilean and Argentinean coastlines. Most of those were sailing ships in a time before steamships could navigate through the Straights of Magellan farther north. The steel and aluminum ships of today with powerful diesel engines, computer controlled stabilizers, ballast tanks, the latest in radar, GPS navigation and satellite communication with weather prediction satellite services have a much easier time plying the waters of the Southern Ocean.
Our day was spent making our way from the “Furious Fifties” towards the “Screaming Sixties” these terms were also the poetic outcome of the age of sail, when steel men worked upon wooden ships. There was wind and spray and the occasional wave over the bow but the National Geographic Explorer is a great ship and begs to be taken in seas such as these. With her great hull design and all the modern equipment mentioned above we made 13 knots (about 15 miles per hour) through the Drake. While other ships have to slow to accommodate rough seas, the National Geographic Explorer can cross the Drake Passage more quickly and in relative comfort towards the protection of the Antarctic Peninsula.
After today we will begin our exploration of the outer South Shetland Islands and then Antarctica itself.
