Drake Passage gives us a little taste of what it is capable of.

Already in the early hours of the new day, we can feel the conditions worsen.

25, 30, 40, gusts of 45 knots.

3, 4, 5, 5.5 meters.

The cold wind blasts from the north-northwest, the seas grow. It is overcast and rainy.

Sailing between beam reach and downwind at a good 8 kn of speed, the ship heels to port side, dipping the main deck railings, while at the same time now and then we have some heavy rolls. The swell slams against the ship and washes her decks.

An impressive day of good and spectacular sailing, keeping the watches busy on deck and aloft, adjusting the rig to the gusting winds. It is amazing how moody and temperamental the weather, winds, and seas can be, and how quickly they can change along the 500 nm of the Drake Passage. A sunny and easy day can soon become a demanding journey in the span of a few hours.

In the early morning, topgallants have to come down and be furled, the outer jib too, and then the main course.

It is just before lunch when the fore upper topsail has to be doused fast and packed away after it rips apart along a whole seam. When the conditions abate a bit in the afternoon, the wind steadies around 25 to 30 kn and the sun shines; it is time to quickly replace it with a spare one. A procedure that will keep us busy until a couple of hours after dinner, when the newly bent-on sail is ready to set. The torn sail lies in the library, and members of the permanent crew are hand-stitching the seam in the time between other duties.

As the hours pass by during the afternoon, we first steer almost downwind, but luckily under an easier sea state, experiencing less heel, though the rolling is ever-present throughout the whole day.

Sailing fast and hard, today we entered the Antarctic system. A look at the surface water temperature tells us about the crossing of the Polar Front. The readings at 16:00h are 5.8 °C, while four hours later they have dropped to 4.4 °C, just below the latitude of 60° S and at 194 nm away from the South Shetland Islands.

This front indicates that we leave behind the Subantarctic area and enter the cold and icy Antarctica, even though we are still far away from the first lands to be seen.

This boundary was first described in 1911 by the German scientific expedition led by Wilhelm Filchner on board the ship Deutschland on their way deep into the Weddell Sea, beyond the eastern coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula. During their enterprise, many scientific observations were conducted, including meteorological, geological, and oceanographical measurements. Aboard sailed Brennecke, an oceanographer, who discovered the four isolated water masses in the Southern Ocean, including the finding of a sudden change in the salinity of surface waters flowing north and an associated steep temperature plunge. A consistent boundary between the Subantarctic and Antarctic worlds, nowadays known as the Antarctic Convergence Area or Polar Front.