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My Drake Passage Seasickness Experience
I experienced some pretty bad seasickness on my first trip, the one across the Drake Passage. Here is an account of my experience at the time from my journal:
The Breakfast Table Scene
Glasses and plates rattle like the percussion section. The boat crashes back down onto the water with a boom of a bass drum. The constant hum and rumble of the engines provide the melody. Occasionally, you’ll hear a wave crash against the boat with a swishing noise in a completely different key.
As I sat in my chained-down chair at the breakfast table, I watched my coffee in my cup teeter-totter back and forth towards the rim of the cup. I tried to guess when it would finally go over the side and spill over into my saucer. As I fixated on the service staff rolling and pitching with large platters in their hands, I overheard a man say that today we had a very confused sea. I thought about the term confused sea and slightly chuckled to myself, giving my uneasy stomach a moment of relief as my mind had something else to think about for a moment. I mused to myself that it’s not really the sea’s fault – it’s just a little mixed up, as if someone didn’t provide the correct directions.
Horizontal Survival Mode
I leave after eating a couple of bites of my fruit and retreat to the horizontal position that the Drake Passage requires me to be in. I don’t like the horizontal position – it gives me too much time to think. I think about my stomach, think about my life, I think about every little noise, and I think about just how much the ship is pitching and rolling.
This is what I was worried about when we were preparing for the trip. The Drake Passage is the body of water between the southern tip of South America and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It gets its reputation as the roughest sea in the world for good reason. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current gets squeezed through this narrow gap between the South American and Antarctic continents, and it is the squeezing of this current in an area of naturally high winds that is a major cause of Drake’s moodiness.
I close my eyes, but the symphony continues – the popping and creaking noises never stop. Why won’t they stop? It sounds as if you are deep underwater, and the popping and crackling noises are the water and pressure on your head – squeezing it like a vice.
Just as I predicted, my dad is unaffected by the sea, but I’m down for the count even after taking meds. He even goes outside to the top deck to watch the chaos. He gets to see Cape Horn and gets a picture of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans ‘intersection. He comes back to the room with sea spray covering his glasses and brings a burst of fresh air into the stale room. He talks excitedly about what he’s seen as if he’s a young boy who just got off his first roller coaster ride. I can’t help but smile.
