The winds that circle almost continuously around Antarctica are so unique that imagining them as a sentient force is no stretch of the imagination. Immortal fronts of air that travel endless and free, never know the impediment of immovable mountains. As the National Geographic Explorer slices through the waves pushing even further south we attract the interest of a few travelling gusts headed more or less our way. They treat us gently enough and seem content to artistically shape the spray of our wake into salty white sculptures that rise up out of the deep indigo blue waters, mixing into a cerulean froth. The reputation of crossing the Drake Passage keeps many would be adventures at home, for in the words of Herman Melville;
“ … these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.”
While conditions today could not be described as tranquil, metaphorical marine felines were thankfully nowhere to be found, though several pairs of sea legs did make an appearance. Nature sightings based in reality included a variety of petrels and albatross and two somewhat out of place snowy sheathbills that effectively if not elegantly joined in with the convoy of seabirds riding the following winds that accommodatingly keep them aloft as we edge ever closer to the last continent ahead.
