Antarctica 2011.
Pretty remarkable start to the trip. Boarded the ship out of Ushuaia (the southern most city in the world) about 430. After numerous safety briefings and meeting our Russian captain, we did an abandon ship drill. We each have full body suits that sustain life in freezing water (don’t expect we’ll need them).
Sir Robert Swan kicked things off with a presentation on leadership. He earlier had introduced himself at the hotel. He told us about an expedition rule called “Bronco 5”. Our morning meeting was to start at 10. People wandered in a few minutes late. Sir Robert – the first person ever to walk unassisted to both the north and south poles – told us a story about his dear friend, named “ Bronco”. Bronco summitted Mt. Everest. But he dawdled on the summit and could not make it down to Camp 5. He did the highest bivouac in history near the summit. He lost all of his toes and then his oxygen froze. The only way to turn his oxygen back on was to take off his gloves – which would mean losing his fingers. He did it and survived, but lost all of his fingers as well. Had he left the summit 5 minutes earlier, he would have made it. This expedition has a “Bronco 5” rule: when we need to be somewhere, be there five minutes early. Punctuality matters. No one has been late to a meeting yet.
Robert gave a presentation on his expedition across Antarctica. It took seven years to plan and raise money. There were some funny stories about how it all began, which is in his book. I won’t describe it all but he and two others made to the south pole on foot. The entire expedition took over one year. He lost 70 pounds and his brown eyes turned to a haunting gray color, which they retain to this day. The ship that was to take him back sank and it was an incredible story of how they finally made it back – and how they fulfilled his commitment to retrieve every bit of debris they left on the continent. Incredible. You have to read the book. One person asked him how he kept sane dragging a sled everyday for three months in complete whiteness. This was extraordinary. He said he learned how to access memories – exact, perfect recall of any event from his life back to a memory of being one-year old (later confirmed by his mother). He said his brain became like a video warehouse. He could turn on anything at any time and watch it. He retains a photographic memory.
We are about to leave the Beagle channel (Darwin came through here on the Beagle when he was only in his 20’s) into the Drake Passage. “the Drake” is the nastiest piece of ocean in the world. 600 miles between tip of South America and Antarctica. It is 10:30 at night an am beginning to feel this big ship rock. We have all applied our patches or taken our dramamine. Weather travels west to east, of course, and west of the Drake is 9000 miles of nothing. The longest stretch of open ocean on earth. 50 ft waves can occur at any time – while hurricanes in the south Atlantic or Nor-easters in the northern atlantic occur seasonally, such weather can happen anytime without warning here. Sailors say that “below 40 degrees south, there is no law; below 50 degrees there is no God”. We are going to almost 70. He also pointed out that we are the last expedition of the season (it is now fall down here). There are no other ships out here.
This is the ocean where Shackelton spent his epic two years of survival in the early 20th century. Robert recounted the exploits of Shackelton and Scott and Amundson. These were the bravest most intrepid explorers in history – though the stories of Magellan and Drake were simply less well chronicled but even more extraordinary in that they did it in the 16th century with relatively small wooden boats and no modern navigation. And they did not actually go around the Horn; they went through the Straits of Magellan (hundreds of miles north of where we are). Drake got blown off course to Cape Horn.
It will take us two days to cross the Drake – maybe less, since our ship – the Sea Spirit – is quite fast and very comfortable. But no ship is immune from the magnitude of the ocean down here. As Robert said, “than Drake and the Antarctic wants to kill you; we are fighting against that every day”. Probably a little overly dramatic, but this is pretty damn remote and pretty damn serious. I am counting on my ear patch. On the top deck, where my cabin is, things are already swaying hard and we are not yet into the open ocean. We were told to “Drake proof” our cabin – meaning nothing unsecured; everything on the floor or tied down. With that, it’s off to bed. If I’m not too sick, will report tomorrow from the middle of the Drake.
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