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This is the fourth dispatch in a series from Jeff Goodell, who is in Antarctica investigating the effect of climate change on Thwaites glacier.
This morning, the rolls are bigger. Just getting out of bed is achallenge as the Nathaniel B. Palmer navigates the famously rough waters of Drake Passage on our way to Antarctica. I try to time my movements with the swells, launch myself out ofbed, grab a rail, pull myself to the bathroom door. As I brush myteeth, I hold tight to the sink with one hand. I skip the shower.
At breakfast, I learn that we have cut our speed from 10 knots to 8knots because there is a big storm in front of us that we are trying tolet pass before we plunge into it. Of course, this being the SouthernOcean, there is also another storm behind it, so we are going to try todash between them and avoid the worst of each. I feel my queasiness anddisequilibrium growing, surging in and out with the rhythm of the swell.In the mess hall, waves swirl over the portholes like water in awashing machine, darkening the room.
Later, I attend a meeting with scientists aboard the ship, but it’sclear that nobody is doing much of anything. It’s difficult to stare at acomputer screen while the ship is rocking. Some people retreat to theirbunks. Others are crashed in the lounge on the second floor, staringat their phones.
In the afternoon, I climb up to the bridge, where Rick Wiemken, the chief mate, is at thehelm. He talks briefly with the captain, Brandon Bell, a Texan who isultimately in charge of the ship. Wiemken and Bell go over the latestweather reports before Bell heads downstairs.
“How big is the swell today?” I ask Wiemken.
“I’d say about 15 feet. A few might be higher than that.”
As the bridge rocks, Wiemken explains how we are going to try to timeit just right. With two storms in our way, we are slowing down enough tolet one pass, then will try to dart across before the other hits us. “It’s likewaiting for a break in the traffic to run across the highway,” he explains.
He says the ship is taking the waves pretty well. We are carrying440,000 gallons of diesel fuel, which helps the ship ride low in thewater. “You’d be feeling it a lot more if we had less fuel,” Wiemkensays. “Still, we’re gonna do our best to miss these storms. We want tostay out of as much trouble as we can.”
We stand there in silence for a while, watching the waves roll in, thebow pitching down, the spray coming up at us.I notice Wiemken looking to the west, in the direction of the oncomingstorm. When I ask him what he’s looking at, he says, “I’m keeping aneye out for rogue waves. This area we’re in now is known for them. Ifyou see one coming, you hove-to and hit it head-on. You don’t want totake it on the beam. That would not be good.”
“How big might a rogue wave get?”
“You never know. In conditions like this, 30 feet. But it could behigher.”
“How do you spot a rogue wave at night?”
He laughs nervously. “I hoped you wouldn’t ask that question,” andthen he doesn’t answer it.
According to Anna Wahlin, a physical oceanographer from University ofGothenburg who is on the ship, how rogue waves form is still a mysteryto scientists. “We know the dynamics of one wave starts to influence thedynamics of the next wave,” Wahlin explains. “But how exactly thathappens, we don’t know. Normally we would say that waves are linear,which means they don’t affect each other. You have one wave here, andone wave there, and what you get when you combine them is exactly thesum of the two waves. But rogue waves are created by non-lineardynamics, which means you get something more than adding the two wavestogether, and it is something you can’t predict just from adding onewave to another wave.”
By 10 p.m., when I’m in my bunk, the ship is rocking violently. Mymattress is slipping around, as if I were sleeping on ice. The rock ofthe ship is predictable, like a pendulum. My feet rise, theblood rushes to my head, the mattress slides, then it goes back theother way, feet falling, until I almost feel like I’m standing up.The blood in my body feels like a current connected with the ocean. Acoffee filter bangs around the room. Books fall off the desk. Distantly, I hear things tumbling down the hallway.
At breakfast in the mess hall the next morning, there are a lot of ashen faces. The ship rocked violently all night. Nobodyslept well. Water constantly washes over the portholes, creating thefeeling that we’re almost underwater. Lars Boehme, a scientist at St.Andrews University who is on the trip,jokes, “When you see penguins flying through the portholes, you knowyou are in trouble.” How the kitchen staff gets breakfast outin these conditions is unfathomable. Slicing a strawberry as the shiprocks like this requires supreme confidence.
I bump into Wiemken after breakfast, who is just off his 8 a.m. shift atthe helm. He says they made a course correction at 7 a.m., turning theship due south — “too much synchronous roll,” he says. By turningsouth, instead of southwest, as the course had been, the ship takes on thewaves more directly and the roll is reduced. “It’s not so muchdangerous as it is uncomfortable,” Wiemken explains. “We are worriedabout people getting hurt, doors slamming, gear flying around.”
I climb up to the bridge, where Captain Bell and one of the mates are atthe helm. I notice that the ocean is in a different mood today — instead of yesterday’s furious white-capped waves, it’s a horizon of long, peaking swells. Theyheave the ship to 30 degrees and flood the main deck. As I watch, “Brown Sugar”is playing on the bridge sound system. The ship moves from side to side inrolling waves that don’t look like anything from a distance butlift the ship up like a rubber ducky in a bathtub. I secure myself in anobserver seat on the port side of the bridge. As we roll, the horizontilts radially and the bridge dips down toward the sea. At the end ofeach roll, it almost feels like I could reach out and touch the water.
As the ship rocks, Captain Bell is cool. He grew up in north Texas, ona ranch his family has had since the 1800s. He raises commercial cattle androdeo bulls. He has been through the Drake many times. “This is ourstretch of the highway, we know it pretty well,” he says. I ask himabout the highest wave he’s seen in the Drake — “60 feet,” he says.
I joke that waves like that must be like riding a rodeo bull. “It’s just a different kind of ride,” he says, smiling, and explains thatthe waves are more spread out, so you go up one side, and then over thetop, and down the other.
Today, despite the course correction, the swell is still hitting theship on the beam, which is causing a big roll. On the wall in thebridge is an instrument that tells you how far the ship is tilting. Iwatch it roll past 30 degrees. I ask him where he gets worried,and he says 35 or 40 degrees.“It’s not like the ship is going to rollover,” he explains. “But there can be a lot of damage, a lot ofcomputers flying around.”
In the early afternoon, I retreat into one of the labs on the main deckof the ship. The rolls continue to build. Then one hits that is biggerthan the others, and the ship keeps tilting until if feels like we arealmost sideways. I grab the desk, and it takes all my strength to hold on.I hear things tumbling in the halls. Chairs topple over. A fellow journalistsitting a few seats away from me struggles to hold on, but loses hergrip. Her chair flips over with her in it. Everything that isn’tsecured flies across the room. Across the hall, in another lab, afreezer door flies open, contents spill out. The ship rocks back theother way and it is impossible to stand up. For the first time, I seereal fear in people’s eyes.
But as it turns out, that is the worst of it. The rolls continue, butbecome gentler. We all pick up the chairs, clean up the debris that hasscattered around the lab and double-check to make sure everything isstrapped down.
When I get up to the bridge around 8 p.m., Wiemken is at the helm again.“Quite a ride, huh?” he says, smiling. “I think the worst is over. Wesqueezed through the storms. We’re back on course now.”
Mother Nature’srage has passed, the sea around us is laying down. We are back up tospeed at 10 knots.Chicago is playing on the bridge’s sound system.We are hitting 60 degrees latitude, near the edge of the AntarcticConvergence, where the water changes and the temperature drops and wearrive in a different world.
“Tonight, we’ll turn on the spotlight for the first time,” Wiemken sayscoolly. “It’s time to start looking out for icebergs.”
