Day 9 · December 28, 2027 · The Drake Passage
There is one place on earth where an ocean current runs all the way around the planet and never touches land. You are about to sail across it.
Look at a globe and put your finger on the latitude of the Drake Passage, around 58 degrees south.
Now spin the globe. Your finger stays on water the whole way around.
Why the Drake Passage is rough
With no land to stop it, the wind builds and builds. Sailors named the latitudes for how hard it blows: the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, the Screaming Sixties.
The water does the same thing. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current runs west to east around the whole continent, and the Drake is the narrowest gap in its path.
That current moves roughly 135 times the flow of every river on earth combined. It is the largest ocean current on the planet.
Wind that never stops, plus the biggest current in the world, plus a narrow gap. That is the Drake Passage.
Drake Lake or Drake Shake
Crews here use two names for the crossing.
A Drake Lake is a calm one. The water lies flat, people stand out on deck, and everyone takes pictures of how easy it was.
A Drake Shake is the other kind. Swells of thirteen to twenty feet are ordinary. In a serious storm they run far higher.
The crossing takes about a day and a half. Which version you get depends on the weather that week.
The Antarctic Convergence
Somewhere between 55 and 60 degrees south, the ship crosses the Antarctic Convergence.
Cold water flowing north off Antarctica meets warmer water coming from the north, and the two do not mix easily. Sea temperature drops several degrees across a short stretch of ocean.
It is one of the sharpest biological boundaries anywhere. Different water, different plankton, different birds. Nutrients well up along the line, so the feeding is good and the wildlife knows it.
Watch the ship’s temperature display during the day. You can see the moment you arrive.
Onboard with Taylor
Join Taylor for informative and invigorating learning and discussion about the geology, geography, history, and peoples of the areas we’re sailing through.
Who the Drake Passage is named for
The passage is named for Francis Drake. The first recorded crossing came later, in 1616, under the Dutch navigator Willem Schouten.
Before the Panama Canal opened in 1914, ships trading between the Atlantic and the Pacific came through here or through the Strait of Magellan. Plenty of them did not make it.
Next: the first ice
The swell eases. Ice appears in the water.
