A passage to Antarctica

The Aleksey Maryshev negotiates icebergs in Antarctica. Picture / Jim Eagles

It wasn't exactly the weather you'd like to see when you're about to head across the most notorious stretch of ocean in the world. All day, the wind had howled through the streets of Ushuaia, stepping-off point for our voyage to Antarctica, but when the time came for us to board our vessel it got even worse.

As we walked down the pier to the Russian polar research ship Aleksey Maryshev it reached severe gale force on the Beaufort Scale, so strong that we had to hang on to the customs building midway down the pier to avoid being blown into the water.

We had barely boarded when the captain announced he was leaving early because the wind was so bad that the prefect was about to close the port.

Thank goodness, we thought, we remembered to take our seasick pills a couple of hours before.

As our sturdy 66m craft bounced its way up the Beagle Channel, plenty of wildlife was there for all to see - giant petrel, blackbrowed albatross, skua, kelp gulls, sooty shearwaters and rocky islets bristling with Magellanic penguins - but the wind was so strong and the air so filled with spume whipped from the wave tops it was difficult to stay outside to watch.

Even the world's largest cruise liner, the Queen Mary II with its 2600 passengers, decided to depart early.

If it was this rough in the Beagle Channel, usually seen by sailors as a refuge from the ferocious waters of the Southern Ocean, what would it be like in the open sea?

For generations of seafarers the Drake Passage has been the most feared piece of ocean on earth.

It is the 1000km gap between the notorious Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America, and the Antarctic Peninsula, through which are funnelled all the wind, waves and currents which scream around Antarctica at the bottom of the world.

Sailors talk with dread about the Roaring Forties - the wild seas 40 degrees south - but the Drake Passage runs through the Frightful Fifties into the Screaming Sixties.

Oldtime mariners used to say, "Below 40 degrees, there is no law. Below 50 degrees, there is no God." On the basis of the books I've read about sailing round Cape Horn I felt like adding, "Below 60 degrees there is no hope."

As the Aleksey Maryshev continued punching up the channel we ate dinner slowly and cautiously and eschewed liquor. Then, slightly nervously, we went to bed in our little two-berth cabin. As the occupant of the top bunk I fastened the canvas protector to prevent myself being tossed out in the night, and turned out the light.

Getting to sleep was tricky. Because of its shape, the Aleksey Maryshev rolls rather than bucks. And our bunks lay across the ship. As a result, instead of being tossed out as I had feared, I slid up and down.

Still, I did eventually drop off and even slept through our midnight entry to the open sea. When I woke it was surprisingly calm.

Waves down here can be huge - our ship hit 12.5m waves on its previous trip - but these were only about 5m and the wind was relatively gentle.

A few passengers went about with green faces, and some stayed in their cabins during the two-day voyage, but most were up and about, eating, drinking, listening to lectures on Antarctic history and wildlife, and looking for birds and whales.

There was surprisingly little sign of life - much less than usual, according to our guides - but we did see several magnificent wandering albatross swooping majestically around the ship with their blackbrowed and greyheaded cousins, plus various prions, petrels and penguins.

The greatest excitement came from a glimpse of a few hourglass dolphins and, especially, a rare beaked whale.

Sightings picked up towards the end of the second day when we crossed the Antarctic Convergence, the point where the icy polar water meets the warmer waters of the northern oceans, an area rich in food.

Suddenly the ship was surrounded by albatross, penguins and petrels and there were even a few sightings of humpbacks, minkes, orca and a fin whale, though throughout the voyage whale sightings were disappointing.

As the Antarctic drew close, passengers gathered on the bridge where the captain, Vladimir Gayvoronsky, a stocky, grandfatherly chap, with close-cropped grey hair and glasses, appeared from his cabin to oversee proceedings.

One passenger was sufficiently bold to ask if he spoke English. "No," he replied in a deep, gravelly voice.

So did he, then, speak Spanish? "No, I do not speak Spanish either," the captain replied. "Do you speak Russian?"

"Um," responded the passenger, "does vodka count?" "No," said the captain. "It must be cold vodka."

Like all the Russian crew his forbidding exterior concealed a friendly nature, wry sense of humour and quite good English.

The captain was still on the bridge as dusk fell, constantly fine tuning the radar to check on the white blobs it identified, when suddenly one of the blobs appeared shining through the gloom of the starboard bow, our first iceberg. It was an appropriately icy signal that we had reached Antarctica.

Obviously the Drake Passage can be much more challenging than that - though our voyage back was much the same - but for us the reality was not as bad as the expectation.

As well as having to get used to going to sleep while sliding up and down, we also had to remember to hold on to the rails while walking round, not to try to carry two drinks at once, to apply soap in the shower one-handed while hanging on with the other and to cope with moving cutlery on the dining table.

But even those most sensitive to motion were generally able to get through the voyage by lying down and dining on dry biscuits and toast. Most passengers - even those with no previous experience at sea - were barely affected. And the Antarctic experience at the end of the voyage was well worth it.