Day one. The channel out of Ushuaia is still flat; after dinner the ship begins to rise and fall like something breathing. Over the intercom the expedition leader says: for the next forty hours, four-metre swells — a mild rate of the “Drake tax”. Every drawer in the cabin has a latch, and now I understand why. I take the seasickness pill and hand myself over to the bed. There is a strange honesty in the swaying — it reminds you that you are going somewhere not easily reached.
Day two. The swell has eased a little. I have learned how to walk aboard a ship: always keep one hand for the rail, treat the corridor as a gentle slope. In the afternoon I go up to the bridge to watch an albatross follow the ship — wings more than two metres wide, barely beating, gliding along the troughs of the waves like a letter delivered by the wind. The captain says some albatrosses will follow a single ship for a thousand kilometres.
At dusk the intercom sounds: off the port bow, the first iceberg. The whole ship pours onto the deck. It is larger than in the photographs, and quieter too, blue as a flame kept at low temperature. Someone says softly: we’ve arrived. The captain corrects them: not yet — but from this iceberg on, you have begun to arrive.
So arrival is not a moment but a process. The meaning of the Drake Passage, perhaps, is to enlarge that process until even the body can remember it.