Day 3 - 5 on with Albatros Expeditions: Crossing the Drake Passage

I’m writing this post from the Drake Passage which means we’re almost in Antarctica!

After years of hoping, months of planning, and un unexpected night in Beagle Channel, our bucket destination is about to become a reality for us.

We were meant to start making our way through Drake Passage on the evening of day 1, but as my last post shared, day 2 saw us sheltering in Beagle Channel.

Our captain expected we’d leave at 7 pm on day 3, but surprised us around 3 pm with an unexpected early departure – news never sounded sweeter!

How rough was the Drake going over?

We were warned to expect calm water for a while, before we slipped past the last of South America, at which point large swell and waves would hit us.

The sea started picking up around 7 pm. Rolling waves made dinner a little more interesting than usual, but all in all, the evening was pretty subduded.

Off to bed we trotted, loaded up with drouzy seasickness medication onboard, hoping for a good night’s sleep.

That would probably naieve though, as neither of us slept much, even with the help of a sleeping pill.

We faced the worse of the waves overnight (about 4 metres), but they were fortunately very manageable. They were, however, large enough to make sleep hard to come by for many of us.

The following days (day 4 and 5), saw relatively calm conditions, quite unlike what we were all expecting.

Despite being delayed initially, we can’t believe our luck – it could have been so, so much worse.

These days have been filled with workshops, presentations, food, animal-spotting, snoozing and plenty of chatting with our newfound expedition buddies, so passing the time hasn’t been a challenge at all.

The food continues to be a bit hit-or-miss.

Breakfast has been tasty every morning and lunch is generally good too. The selection at dinner has been a bit limited though, which has resulted in some pretty average meals – though nobody is going hungry.

Activities onboard while crossing Drake Passage

Though we had read some complaints online regarding the lack of activities, we haven’t found this to be the case.

The crew are lovely, and are often found wandering the top decks, helping to spot and identify animals and birds.

Many of them have also shared informative, interesting science and history-based presentations, helping us to understand what we are seeing/are about to see.