Drake Passage Live

The stretch of open ocean between the southern tip of South America and Antarctica, and the shortest sea route to the continent. Almost every Antarctic expedition leaving Ushuaia crosses it.

It is where three oceans meet, and there is no land at that latitude to slow anything down. That is what gives it both its reputation and its wildlife.

Between Cape Horn at the tip of Chile and the South Shetland Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula. Ships leave from Ushuaia in Argentina, run down the sheltered Beagle Channel first, and reach open water in the small hours.

About 600 miles, or roughly 1,000 kilometres. At its narrowest it is around 645 kilometres across.

That width is why the crossing takes about a day and a half to two days each way rather than a few hours.

It is the deepest strait in the world. The average depth is around 3,400 metres and the deepest point measured is about 5,248 metres.

Depth matters less to your crossing than you might think. What you feel is wind and swell at the surface.

After Sir Francis Drake, who never actually sailed it. Drake took the safer Strait of Magellan in 1578, but one of his ships was blown far south and sighted the open water beyond Cape Horn. The name stuck to a passage he avoided.

In Spanish-speaking countries it is often called the Mar de Hoces, after the Spanish navigator Francisco de Hoces, whose ship was pushed south in 1525.

It depends what you count as discovery. Francisco de Hoces sighted the open water in 1525 and one of Drake's ships did the same in 1578. Neither sailed through it.

The first confirmed traversal was in 1616, by a Dutch expedition under Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, who rounded Cape Horn and named it.

Because it is the only place at that latitude where a continent gets out of the way. Water flowing east around Antarctica has nothing to stop it, so it circles the globe, and the Drake is the narrowest gap it has to squeeze through anywhere on that circuit.

That funnelling is what makes the Passage behave the way it does.

The largest ocean current on the planet. It flows eastward all the way around Antarctica, uninterrupted by any landmass, and it carries roughly 135 times more water than every river on earth combined.

It is also what keeps Antarctica cold, by isolating it from warmer water further north.

It is one of the two reasons the Drake is demanding. The current is squeezed through the narrowest gap it has to pass through anywhere on its circuit, which is what steepens the sea here rather than elsewhere.

Wind, current and geography all stack up in the same place. That is the whole explanation.

Usually not bad. We sail it in the austral summer, which is the calmer part of the year, and a normal crossing is decently easy. It gets rough sometimes and it is rarely horrible.

Two things genuinely changed the picture in recent years. Modern stabilisers, and much better forecasting that lets expedition teams route around the big systems. The full picture on Drake conditions.

Rougher than most seas you have crossed, and far less rough than its reputation. The reputation gets built on the worst days, because those are the crossings people write about afterwards.

The people who had an easy crossing tend not to write about it, which is how the reputation stays worse than the average trip.

Most crossings are fine. You sail it in summer, which is the calmer half of the year, and a normal crossing is easier than most people expect. Some are rough. Very few are genuinely horrible.

You are in it about a day and a half to two days each way. Whether you get a calm one or a lively one is luck, not something you can choose, and plenty of travellers get a calm crossing one way and a rough one coming back.

If the crossing is the thing standing between you and the trip, tell us that and someone who has crossed it will talk you through it. More on what the crossing is actually like.

No. Some crossings are flat enough that people photograph how calm it is, and plenty of travellers get a calm one in one direction and a lively one in the other on the same voyage.

Luck of the draw, and better odds than the reputation suggests.

Three things stacked in one place. There is no land at that latitude to slow the westerly winds, so they build unopposed the whole way round the globe. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current does the same. And the Passage funnels both through the gap between Cape Horn and the Antarctic Peninsula.

Because the wind has blown over open water for thousands of miles from more than one weather system, swells arrive from different directions and stack into steep, confused seas. That is why the Drake can feel worse than the same wave height elsewhere.

We are not going to rank it, because nobody can do that honestly and the comparison does not help you. The reputation exists for a reason and it is built on the worst days.

What matters more is that expedition ships cross it hundreds of times a season, in summer, with stabilisers and modern routing.

On a calm crossing, like being on a large ship in a long slow swell. You notice it and you get used to it. On a rough one, like walking a corridor with a hand on the rail and going to bed early.

Most people describe the first evening in open water as the moment it becomes real, and day two as the point they stopped thinking about it.

Most of our travellers say yes, and a surprising number name the crossing as a favourite part of the trip rather than the price of admission.

Neill's framing, from the notes he sends before departure: your trip does not start when you reach Antarctica, it starts when you step aboard and enter the Drake.

No, and this is a myth worth killing. Past the Drake you are in sheltered water the whole time and ships tuck into protected coves. Once you are in Antarctica the seasick days are over.

Different water, a different ship, and much shorter. A Caribbean or Mediterranean sailing on a 3,000 passenger vessel is not comparable to two days of Southern Ocean on a ship carrying 130 to 180. You will feel more movement.

One practical difference before you book: balconies are closed during the crossing for safety, so the cabin you would pick on a big ship is not the cabin you want here. Compare the fleet.

No single equivalent, and it depends which Arctic trip. Svalbard, Greenland, Iceland and the Northwest Passage are separate voyages with separate sea time, and none has one famous crossing that defines the itinerary the way the Drake defines a peninsula trip.

If the crossing is your main worry then that is a genuine reason to look north.

A Drake Lake is water flat enough that you forget you are at sea. A Drake Shake keeps one hand on the handrail. Both are traveller slang rather than measurements, and there is a lot of ordinary sea in between that never gets a nickname.

The swell ranges behind each one.

More often than people expect, and never predictably. Calm crossings are common enough that plenty of travellers get one, and nobody can tell you in advance whether yours will be.

Treat it as a coin toss you cannot influence, and prepare as though you will get the rough version.

No. Not your agent, not the captain, and not a forecast more than a few days out. Anyone promising you a calm crossing is selling you something.

Around a day and a half to two days each way. Ships leave Ushuaia in the afternoon and run down the sheltered Beagle Channel first, so you often get a full dinner and a night's sleep before you feel anything.

A fast crossing sometimes earns a bonus early landing, which is the best possible outcome.

On a standard Peninsula voyage from Ushuaia, four. Two sailing south and two sailing back. Longer itineraries that add South Georgia or the Falklands carry considerably more open-ocean time, not less. Compare itinerary lengths.

No. The Beagle Channel is sheltered and the first hours are calm enough for a proper meal and a night's sleep. If you wake and the ship is moving, you are in the Drake. Take anything preventative before bed, not after.

You are paying for a trip that includes them, and they are not dead days. Southbound is where the trip gets built: zodiac briefings, boot and parka fitting, biosecurity checks, and the lectures that teach you how to read what you are about to see.

Northbound is the wind down. Days run roughly 7am to 9pm.

Two to three days out, usefully. Beyond five, not really. Southern Ocean forecasting works from thin data spread over an enormous area, so models agree on where the big systems are and disagree on timing and strength.

Two days before departure your captain has a workable picture and can plan around the worst of it. Two weeks out, checking the forecast will only cost you sleep.

Reliable on the big picture, unreliable on the detail. Models will agree that a low is coming and disagree by a day on when it arrives and by ten knots on how hard it blows.

Better forecasting is one of the two things that genuinely changed this crossing, because it lets expedition teams route around the worst of a system rather than drive through it.

Usefully about three days. Somewhere between five and seven it becomes a general idea rather than a forecast, and beyond that it is not worth watching.

If you are sailing next week, watch the pattern rather than the moment. If you are sailing next season, do not watch at all.

Windy is the one we use, and it is the map embedded at the top of this page. It lets you switch between wind, waves and swell, and choose your model.

Set the units to knots so the numbers match how crews talk about wind. And read the number rather than only the colour, because Windy's scale does something unexpected at the top end.

Blue is calm, greens and khakis are moderate, and magenta, purple and violet are the strongest winds you are realistically looking at. There is no red anywhere on Windy's default wind scale.

One thing catches people out. Between roughly 47 and 56 knots the scale loops back through steel blue and teal grey before returning to purple, so a storm-force Drake can look almost exactly like a calm one.

Yes, and they do it routinely. Leaving Ushuaia a few hours early or late, angling into the swell rather than taking it on the beam, easing off the speed, or swapping the first landing site are all normal.

Reroute is common. Turning back outright is rare.

A calm crossing runs roughly 0 to 6 feet of swell, an average one 8 to 15 feet, and a rough one anywhere from 10 up to about 40 feet in a genuine storm.

Height matters less than period and direction. A long swell on the bow is comfortable. A short, confused sea on the beam is the one you notice. More on what each range feels like.

The figures you will read quoted around the internet, usually 4 to 5 metres, come with no source attached and no definition of what is being measured. We are not going to repeat them. What we publish is the range we describe to our own customers, which is 8 to 15 feet of swell on a typical crossing.

There is also a definition problem nobody else explains. A forecast quotes significant wave height, which is roughly the average of the biggest third of the waves. The largest waves in the same sea will be close to double that. So a 4 metre forecast is not a 4 metre maximum, and that single detail explains most of the gap between what people read and what they see out of the window.

Not in the Drake, as it turns out. The figure people quote, a 60 foot wave measured in 2017, was recorded by a buoy just west of the Passage, and it holds the Southern Hemisphere record rather than a Drake one.

The top of the range we publish for a genuine storm is around 40 feet, roughly 12 metres. That is a storm and not a normal bad day.

Typically 10 to 20 knots, and it can reach 60 in a strong system. The westerlies at this latitude have nothing to slow them, which is why they build the way they do.

Wind is not wave height. Wind builds swell, and swell travels, so a storm a thousand miles away three days ago can still arrive under a blue sky.

We are not going to publish a record figure, because we cannot source one specific to the Passage and the numbers in circulation come from elsewhere in the Southern Ocean.

What is useful to you: winds here typically sit at 10 to 20 knots and can reach 60 in a strong system. Above about 40 knots a captain is looking at rerouting or waiting.

The Antarctic season runs from November to March, and that is your whole window. There is no month within it that reliably gives a calmer crossing.

Choose your month for wildlife, ice and light instead. November gives you pristine ice and courting penguins, December and January the chicks and the longest days, February and March the best whale watching. See departures by month.

There is no reliably calm month, and you should not choose your departure date on this basis. Our guides put it plainly: the worst Drakes on record have been in February and the best in November.

Every month of the season has produced both flat calm and genuinely rough water, and the spread inside any one month is wider than the difference between months.

Not reliably any of them. Every month of the season has produced both flat calm and genuinely rough crossings.

Pick your month for what you want to see ashore, the wildlife and the ice and the light, because that is the part a calendar can actually tell you.

No, and it is the most common planning mistake we see. The month tells you almost nothing about the crossing you will get.

Book the itinerary and the wildlife you want, then medicate early and stop thinking about it. Talk it through with us.

Cold enough for a proper wind layer on deck and nowhere near as cold as people expect. Sea temperature runs from about 6 degrees Celsius at the northern end down to around freezing in the south, and air temperature tracks it closely.

The wind is what you actually feel. Ten minutes on an open deck at 30 knots is colder than the thermometer suggests.

Roughly 6 degrees Celsius at the northern end and around minus 1 at the southern end, averaging about 5 in summer.

You cross the Antarctic Convergence about halfway, where the temperature drops sharply over a short distance. You can feel it in the air, and the birds around the ship change with it.

The boundary where cold Antarctic water meets warmer water from the north, roughly halfway across. You cannot see a line on the water but you can feel it. The temperature drops, the air changes, and the bird species around the ship change with it.

It is one of the most underrated moments of the whole voyage.

Not reliably, and it varies voyage to voyage. You can get a calm crossing south and a rough one coming back on the same trip, or the other way round.

What does change is you. By the return leg you have your sea legs, and the same water tends to feel like less of an event.

Common enough that the ship is set up for it, and less of a problem than people expect. We will not quote you a percentage, because we cannot source one honestly and a number would give you false confidence either way.

The pattern our guides see: the first evening in open water is when most people feel it, most are fine by day two as the inner ear catches up, and a smaller group feels off for the whole crossing.

Possibly, and it is very treatable. If you get carsick or boat sick at home, that is a reasonable predictor. Being nervous about it is not.

The single thing that changes the outcome most is whether you medicated before you felt anything.

Medicate early and preemptively. That is the biggest factor by a wide margin, and once the weather turns and you already feel sick it is too late to catch up.

Beyond medication: stay low and mid-ship, eat small amounts often, keep water going down, get on deck in cold air and look at the horizon. Do not read in your cabin. Sleep is a legitimate treatment. Talk to your own doctor before you travel. Our guides are not medical professionals and neither are we.

Before you feel anything, which in practice means before you go to bed on the first night out of Ushuaia while you are still in the sheltered Beagle Channel.

Some products want starting earlier than that, so check the instructions and ask your doctor. Talk to your own doctor before you travel. Our guides are not medical professionals and neither are we.

That is a question for your own doctor, not for us. Talk to your own doctor before you travel. Our guides are not medical professionals and neither are we.

What travellers commonly use: patches, tablets, ginger and pressure bands. Bring more than one option, because people respond very differently and you cannot buy your preferred brand in Ushuaia. Do not try something new for the first time at sea.

Patches are the most common thing we see travellers use, and whether they will work for you is a question for your doctor rather than for us.

Two practical notes that catch people out. They should not be combined with alcohol, and they come off in port. Talk to your own doctor before you travel. Our guides are not medical professionals and neither are we.

Pressure bands come up regularly among travellers, and we are not going to tell you they work, because that is a claim we cannot stand behind.

They are cheap and some people swear by them. Bring them alongside something your doctor has recommended rather than instead of it. Talk to your own doctor before you travel. Our guides are not medical professionals and neither are we.

Small amounts, often, rather than a full plate you do not fancy. Keeping something in your stomach helps more than most people expect, and staying hydrated matters more than eating well.

If you would rather not face a dining room, food can be brought to your cabin. Nobody will think anything of it.

Low and mid-ship. A ship pitches and rolls around its centre, so that is where you feel least. Avoid the bow, where the anchors and thrusters are and the motion is worst.

Bow cabins fill last, so book early if you want to avoid ending up in one. And a balcony is not worth buying for seasickness reasons, because balconies sit higher up and are closed during crossings anyway. Compare cabins.

Most people are fine by day two as the inner ear adapts. A smaller group feels off for the full crossing.

It stops when the motion stops. It is visual and vestibular, like car sickness, so it does not follow you ashore.

No. Past the Drake you are in sheltered water and the ships tuck into protected coves. Once you are in Antarctica the seasick days are over.

It is two days, not two weeks.

Usually, yes. Every ship has a doctor who can prescribe and help. Sick bags are placed around the ship and food can be brought to your cabin. Bring your own supply anyway, and bring more than one type.

See the ship's doctor rather than waiting it out. They can prescribe, and they have seen a great deal more of this than you have.

"You are stuck in your cabin the whole crossing" is false unless you are very seasick. The days run roughly 7am to 9pm and they are full.

Southbound is preparation: zodiac briefings, the IAATO and conduct briefings, boot and parka fitting, biosecurity checks, and the first lectures. Northbound is conclusion and more relaxed, with the captain's farewell and the photographer's recap. Some ships run citizen science programmes you can join from the deck.

A calm start, a moment on the first evening when the ship begins to move properly, and a day and a half that is busier than you imagined.

There is nothing to learn in advance and no skill involved. Move slowly, use both hands on stairs, and take the medication before you think you need it. Most first timers report the crossing was easier than the version they had built up in their head.

There is nothing to train for. No fitness level makes the sea calmer, and the crossing asks nothing of you physically beyond moving carefully around a ship.

What does help: see your own doctor well before you travel rather than in the last week, sleep properly the night before you sail, and go easy on alcohol on the first evening out. Talk to your own doctor before you travel. Our guides are not medical professionals and neither are we.

Expect movement rather than hoping for none. The travellers who have the worst time are usually the ones who spent months hoping for a flat crossing and then treated a normal one as bad luck.

Two days each way, in a ship built for it, with a doctor aboard. Put ego aside on the medication, go to bed early on the first night, and let the expedition team fill the days.

Yes, carefully. Use the handrails, keep both hands free, and move slowly on stairs. Most injuries on a rough crossing come from carrying something in both arms.

Outer decks get closed when conditions warrant it. When they are open, going out is the best thing you can do if you feel unwell.

Yes, and you can eat in your cabin if you would rather not face a dining room. The galley keeps running, and crew on these ships work the Drake all season.

Meals are part of your fare, so nothing about a rough day costs you extra.

Very unlikely. Between the briefings, the lectures, the open bridge and the birds off the stern, most people run out of day before they run out of things to do.

Usually, yes, and it is worth going. Watching the officers work the weather is the fastest way to stop worrying about it. It varies by operator, so check the ship.

Wifi is an extra on expedition ships rather than part of your fare, and it varies by vessel. Check the ship before you count on it.

Tell whoever is waiting at home that a day or two of silence is normal.

Pack a crossing bag you can reach without opening your main luggage. Seasickness remedies, a water bottle that seals, plain snacks, a wind layer for the deck and shoes with grip.

Two habits save you trouble on a rolling ship. Keep loose items off flat surfaces, and leave nothing standing upright in the bathroom. Full guidance is in our polar packing list.

Uncomfortable rather than dangerous, on a modern expedition ship. Vessels carry stabilisers and a doctor, officers have crossed hundreds of times, weather is watched constantly, and routes change to suit it.

What you are genuinely dealing with is discomfort, the possibility of a delayed departure, and the fact that you are a long way from a hospital, which is why proper medical and evacuation cover matters.

By planning around it rather than pushing through it. Departure gets moved earlier or later, heading gets angled into the swell instead of taking it on the beam, speed comes off, and the first landing site gets swapped.

On board, outer decks close, loose items get stowed, and lectures move or get cancelled. None of that is an emergency. It is a normal season.

Reroute often, cancel rarely. Departures do get held in the Beagle Channel for a system to pass through, and a voyage can turn north early.

That call is made on safety first and comfort second. If it costs you a day, the itinerary flexes and you stay aboard until the scheduled disembarkation rather than being stranded ashore.

The wreck people are thinking of did not sink in the Drake. The MS Explorer went down on 23 November 2007 in the Bransfield Strait near the South Shetland Islands after striking multi-year ice. All 154 people aboard, 91 passengers, 9 guides and 54 crew, were rescued by the MS Nordnorge.

Every expedition ship carries a doctor and a small medical facility. For seasickness that is straightforward and worth using if what you brought is not working.

The ship's doctor treats you aboard, and for anything beyond their facility the answer is that getting someone off a ship mid-ocean is slow and weather dependent.

That is exactly why medical and evacuation cover is not optional on this trip. Check what your policy covers in remote regions rather than assuming your usual travel insurance stretches this far.

Most modern expedition ships do, and along with better forecasting they are the main reason crossings are more comfortable than they used to be. Retractable fins deploy below the waterline and take a large share of the roll out.

They work on roll and not pitch, so fore and aft movement stays with you. Smaller vessels, older ships and sailing yachts may have none. Check a specific ship.

Somewhat, and less than the brochures imply. A bigger ship generally carries a swell with a slower, longer motion. A smaller one moves more but gets you closer to shore once you arrive, which is the reason you came.

Hull design matters more than tonnage. A ship with an X-bow rides a big sea noticeably better because it lifts rather than slams. Compare hulls.

Generally, yes. The practical issue is mobility rather than nausea. Stairs, corridors and heavy doors on a moving ship need a free hand.

Operators set their own minimum ages, so check the specific voyage. Anyone on regular medication should clear the trip with their own doctor first.

Yes, and a large share of the people we send south are retired. Move slowly, use the handrails, keep hand luggage light, and take anything preventative before you feel you need it.

Mobility on a moving ship is the real consideration, not nausea. Talk to your own doctor before you travel. Our guides are not medical professionals and neither are we.

Most people who tell us that come home saying the crossing was the thing they worried about for nothing. That is not a promise about your crossing, it is what the pattern looks like.

What decides how yours goes is largely not luck. It is whether you medicate before you feel anything, and where your cabin is. Tell us what specifically worries you.

Yes, and there are two routes. Preparation, which means your doctor well before you travel, medication started before the ship sails, and a low mid-ship cabin. Or flying, which swaps two days at sea for a flight of about 1.5 to 2 hours.

Plenty of nervous sailors take the sailing anyway and are fine by day two. Talk it through with us.

Yes, and plan around them rather than around an average. A low mid-ship cabin away from the bow, a doctor's appointment months before you sail, and an agreement in advance that if they want a quiet day in the cabin heading south, you are not going to feel guilty about being on deck watching albatross.

If two uncomfortable days genuinely might outweigh the rest, look at flying one way and sailing the other.

Sometimes, and it depends on your operator and how far out you are. A fly cruise is a separate product from a separate departure city, so this is not a small amendment.

If there is any real chance you will want to fly, decide before you book. Talk to us before you change anything.

Yes. You can fly over the Drake Passage instead of sailing it. Fly-cruise itineraries fly from Punta Arenas in Chile to King George Island in the South Shetlands, roughly a one and a half to two hour flight, and you join your ship there.

The catch is weather. That runway has no instrument approach, so flights go when conditions allow and delays are common. Flying also closes off most of the longer itineraries, including South Georgia, the Weddell Sea and the Antarctic Circle. See the trips that fly over the Drake Passage.

Neither is better. It depends on your time, your budget and the itinerary you want. If a customer is genuinely torn, Neill leans sail, because it is far less likely to lose trip time to delays.

Flying skips about four Drake days and usually gives them back on site. Sailing is cheaper on average, opens every itinerary, and gives you the albatross and the sea days. Compare both.

It depends what you are buying back. If your leave is tight, if you have a genuinely bad history at sea, or if two weeks of dread would spoil the trip, that is money well spent.

Know what you give up. Flying rules out most of the itinerary range, including South Georgia, the Weddell Sea, Circle crossings and base camp trips.

Roughly 8,000 dollars a person, and the fly trips are about three nights shorter. Across the departures we currently sell, sailing starts around 12,000 for the cheapest cabin on a typical trip, flying both ways is nearer 20,000, and flying one way and sailing the other sits in between at about 16,500.

The old line that flying costs about 10,000 more is out of date, and prices move every season. Ask us for the real numbers on your dates rather than working from any figure you read online, including this one.

Yes. You can fly one direction and sail the other, which gives you the Southern Ocean without committing to it twice. That is the option we most often recommend to someone who is nervous but curious.

See the fly and sail departures.

They cross the Drake once, and that is not the same thing as less open ocean.

Most South Georgia itineraries sail one direction across the Drake and return through the Scotia Sea and the Southern Ocean, sometimes via the Falklands. That is open Southern Ocean water. It can be every bit as rough as the Drake and on some voyages it is rougher, and it usually means longer unbroken stretches at sea.

So your total open-ocean time normally goes up, not down. Choose South Georgia for the wildlife, not to dodge rough water.

It can be, and it is the leg people forget to plan for. Our guides talk about the Scotia Sea as rough water in its own right, and it is the reason flying does not get you out of a sea crossing if South Georgia matters to you.

Yes, and more than people expect. Wandering and black-browed albatross find the ship within hours and hold station off the stern, along with petrels and prions. Dolphins and penguins as you leave the Beagle Channel.

On good days, fin and humpback whales. This is the honest argument for sailing rather than flying.

On good days, yes. Fin and humpback whales are both reported in the Passage, more often on the southern half of the crossing. Blows on the horizon are the usual sighting.

Yes, and not only for the wildlife. Fresh air and a horizon are the two most reliable things for settling your stomach, and the first iceberg is usually announced over the PA on day two. Some ships run citizen science you can take part in from the rail.