Dispatch From Wild Antarctica: Part One
Drake Passage — Ever since sailing men first proved the world was not flat, they have been cursing the weather conditions at Cape Horn and, to the south, the Drake Passage, which separates South America from Antarctica.
Everyone from Sir Francis Drake, for whom the windy passage is named, to Captain Bligh—who fought the winds for 100 days before giving in, turning around and sailing to Tahiti the long way—has dreaded these seas.
I’ve crossed the Drake a couple dozen times now and include myself on the long list of those who live with a mild and constant anxiety about the place. Whether leaving from the southern Chilean ports of Punta Arenas or Puerto Williams, or Ushuaia in Argentina—from which most of the 30-odd tourist ships to the Antarctic Peninsula each austral summer leave—in the days leading up to each of the crossings, my fingers are tightly locked, praying for calm seas.
In the days leading up to each of the crossings, my fingers are tightly locked, praying for calm seas.
This time out was no different. We were set to leave aboard the 74-foot Pelagic Australis from a dock lined with expedition yachts on January 2, and the five-day outlook was for incredibly light winds and...calm seas. If that luck held, it looked like we’d make what we anticipated to be a three-day crossing in good time, with little turbulence.
Our luck did not hold. We were delayed waiting for an underwater housing for our 3D cameras—which never arrived, and as far as I know, is still stuck at Buenos Aires customs—and we finally sailed away from Ushuaia at midday on January 4 in 45-mile-per-hour gusts. Just minutes later the port was closed due to strong winds.
That luck—bad luck—hung in for the next four days, as we were bucked by strong easterly winds pushing us far off our hoped-for course of due south to Deception Island. Instead, we were forced to tack far to the east to avoid sailing directly into the wind, taking us slightly out of our way to the eastern edge of the South Shetland Islands. When we finally turned the corner around the Shetlands at King George Island, we had to lower the sails and motor face-on into a pounding wind and sea, making less than four miles an hour.
..we had to lower the sails and motor face-on into a pounding wind and sea, making less than four miles an hour.
At 7 a.m. on January 8 we finally sailed into the caldera of Deception Island, wearied by a trip that had taken about 24 hours longer than it should have.
I had chartered the Pelagic Australis four years ago for a similar exploration; the crew this time around has some overlap: my friends and expedition partners Sean Farrell and Graham Charles were with me then, as was Skip Novak, who owns the Pelagic. But the camera crew has changed, to include 3D experts Ken Corben, Bob Cranston and Johnny Friday.
During the four days of bashing our way across the Drake it was easy to lose focus on why we were headed to the Antarctic Peninsula in the first place. But as a rare sun came out over Whaler’s Bay at Deception Island—lighting up the long, black volcanic sand beach that a century ago was home to one of the most efficient whaling operations the world has ever known—it was easy to put the seasick pills away, crawl out of our bunks and start pulling camera gear out of the holds below.
Wild Antarctica 3D is my first entry into the growing 3D genre. The film industry, pushed by coalitions of heavyweight broadcasters and theater owners around the world, are gambling that 3D’s time has finally arrived and are demanding more and more high-level content. For me, being able to bring the Antarctic Peninsula—a place I’ve been visiting for the past two decades—to audiences in 3D (initially into museum theaters and science institutions) is a tremendous opportunity. I can already see penguins and icebergs jumping off the screen and into people’s laps.
Like much of my writing and filmmaking about Antarctica in recent years, this film will ultimately be about Antarctica’s ice, specifically how it is changing.
Yes, the southern continent is covered in some places by nearly three miles depth of ice, but the Peninsula's ice edges have been degraded each summer for the past four decades, thanks to warming air and sea temperatures. Stepping onto the rare, sunshine-filled beach at Deception Island, we were reminded that many things change here, and they change fast.
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