33. A Wine-Dark Sea
Behold! The Drake Shake.
Be thou a Homer fan or an Aubrey-Maturin acolyte? Then pray, tell me, what is the meaning of a wine-dark sea? And might I live to tell the tale?
Heading North-North-West, we set about our return voyage across the Drake Passage and through the Antarctic Convergence, those mighty jaws of raging water. We got it and we got it bad. Drake Shake. No Fake. Twenty-one foot waves and higher. The ship’s elevators shut down for safety. Signs on the deck exit doors questioned one’s sanity if they went outside. Everything loose was locked up or strapped down. I felt for the wait staff who had to carry trays of food up stairs to passengers bivouacked in their cabins as they battled the symptoms of seasickness.
Our usual fancy sit-down dinner was served buffet-style. Waiters were on hand to help us carry our food back to our tables. We heard a few crashes as a tray of soup bowls went airborne and a water pitcher drenched the carpet. Anything not secure went flying. I don’t know if the captain was deploying the ship’s stabilizers or not, but like a bat out o’ hell, he was trying to get through those stormy gates as quickly as possible. We had three to four hundred miles to go.
Surprisingly, I was not seasick. But the three-point hold was a mandatory practice. In other words, two hands and one foot or two feet and one hand at all times—alternatively, two feet and a derrière, one foot a hand and a derrière—or one would go flying when walking, moving, talking, sitting.
Biblical images danced through my head. Jonah and the whale. Noah and the flood. The Bhagavad Gita’s allusions to a stormy mind. Or literary scenes from Jules Verne’s Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm. Forty-eight hours to contemplate life and its meaning.
And the albatross sails on. The storm petrel kicks it into high gear gliding above a wave crest and slingshotting across the sea only to boomerang back toward the stern of the ship for more excitement.
And at night, the pitch, roll, toss, turn continues with a very loud boom at about 0300 hours in the morning. A rogue wave? A broadside? A sea monster? Yet, we survived.
For those who have faithfully read this blog, you are very near the end. Thank you for paying attention, for reading, for your comments.
wow, you must have kept a detail journal. I had been white water rafting and we had one big splash on a long ride that was scary but it only lasted about two minutes.
Funny how we feel most alive when facing danger.