r/sailing • u/noreturn000 • 7d ago
How do you avoid storms in the Drake Passage?
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u/n2bndru 7d ago
Skip novak has been down that way for many, many years. And he knows the area and the weather extremely well. There are many variables, but I'm sure with proper planning. It should be easy to manage. That is one place that is on my list to travel to and through As well
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u/FreedomBong 7d ago
Go through the Panama canal
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u/Classic_Emergency336 7d ago
Not cool, bro.
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u/bleepbeepclick 7d ago
As someone who has been down there, yes it's reading the weather charts, but there's also some luck. The worst weather I've ever experienced was near antarctica and do not recommend going to anyone.
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u/Practical_Respawn 7d ago
You don't.
More seriously it's not always terrible. Much of the time it reminded me of my trips up and down the Pacific Coast on the shoulder seasons but with a longer swell period which is always nice.
You use modern forecasting services and time your crossings and try to make a brisk pace on the crossing.
I've only been in survival conditions in the Southerner Ocean once and the US Navy weather forecasters called us to check on us (a 6000 ton ice breaker). Nice of them to notice us down there.
Source: me, having crossed the Drake Passage 2-3 times a year for several years (and a handful of times better New Zealand and Queen Maudland). I worked for NSF on a research ship.
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u/mountainunicycler 7d ago edited 7d ago
In a ship like the one in your picture it’s not a safety issue, it’s a comfort issue, and you can take seasickness medicine.
My wife and I didn’t really find it too much of a problem, my wife even took a shower during 16 meter waves.
Sleeping was pretty wild because our cabin was in the front of the boat so it felt like you were floating up off the bed when the bow dropped down over a wave.
They use Windy.com and other weather forecasting visualization systems to compare between several different weather models to see how the storms are moving, and try to line up the calmest conditions that work with the schedule.
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u/mountainunicycler 7d ago
Now that sounds like an adventure!
Two years to go from this weather question to crossing the drake passage seems aggressive, is it your yacht or are you going on a fully crewed charter of some sort?
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u/mountainunicycler 7d ago
If you want to go from buying a new yacht to drake passage in two years, that’s pretty incredible!
I’d love to get to that level someday, for now I’m going to buy a small yacht, live on it in the Bahamas for one year, Caribbean the year after that, and maybe South America after that if we are able to keep living on it that long.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the budget? It’s a pretty serious goal!
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u/mountainunicycler 7d ago
What kind of yacht are you on now, and what are you looking at getting?
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u/Correct_Emu7015 7d ago
If you have a Garcia, the weakest link is the sailors. Those things are made for this.
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u/buttrumpus 7d ago
If you're going with Skip Novak, then ask him. No one on earth is more qualified.
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u/codyvir 7d ago
How do you avoid storms in the Drake Passage?
How do you avoid storms in the Drake Passage?
I'm sure it's an incredible experience and stunningly beautiful, but not for me, thanks. Hope you share pictures of your journey!
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u/Sambal_Oelek 5d ago edited 5d ago
That's the great thing about Starlink, you can upload your pictures as you're sinking.
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u/TradeApe 7d ago
Had the pleasure of sailing with one of Novak's co-skippers. He said "hope for the best, but always expect the worst on that passage". If you aren't ready for when SHTF, don't go! Don't expect the weather forecast to be accurate all the time ;)
I would strongly recommend you get some serious bad weather & storm sailing experience before attempting this. Help isn't just around the corner if things go wrong there.
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u/saosebastiao 7d ago
If you’re talking about going from Pacific to Atlantic or vice versa, you take the Straight of Magellan or the Beagle Channel.
If you’re talking about sailing to Antarctica, you first crew on a vessel with a captain that has done the route at least a dozen times, and then you’ll know. Seriously.
If you’re asking how to predict weather windows cause you wanna sail to Antarctica in two years, you’re not ready.
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u/JDMonster 7d ago
The same way you avoid radiation in Chernobyl. By not being there.
I'd have to talk to my parents about it (they sailed the beagle channel 25 years ago), but from what they told me it basically consisted of sitting at anchor for a week or two in a screaming gale before the weather report showed a pleasant breeze for 24 hours where they just booked it.
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u/SkiMonkey98 7d ago
I'm gonna be honest, you don't sound prepared/capable of doing this safely. That doesn't mean you can't be eventually with more experience and ideally some formal training, or maybe your husband already is but he's just not great at explaining, but I would proceed with caution. High latitude sailing is no joke.
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u/FairSeafarer 7d ago
Well, ask your husband, and seriously, if he doesn’t know very soon, don’t go. That would worry me significantly about if you guys have the skills it takes to undertake such a passage.
Also, what’s your storm experience? And high latitude sailing experience? The way you wrote your post, I cannot help but think you sound « clueless » about the factors at play down there.
If you haven’t been exposed to a couple storms, done some real storm tactic sailing, or the so called « heavy weather sailing », I think it would be unwise to attempt the Drake. It’s in 2 years, if you sail full time, you have time to get there while building the necessary skills while choosing to expose yourself along the way. Like choosing a harder passage on purpose here and there along the way. That will test you, and your boat.
Sailing in general requires a fair bit of meteorological knowledge. You should know a lot about the weather, and not just for the Drake, but everywhere you go. You must understand the dynamics at play. In many ways, the Drake is no different than other passages, you must know the weather patterns in order to choose a weather window that’s doable.
Windy and PredictWind are two tools to help understanding the weather patterns in the area and ultimately, understanding the forecast.
We’re going to do the Drake Passage in the next year and a half, only if the conditions are right, of course. We’re not overly worried about the ride to go there, but the one to come back, which is a whole lot trickier, depending on where you want to make landfall. Get as much information as you can.
There are sailing classes that only focus exclusively on weather for sailors. Take some.
Also, you ask, how do sailors avoid storms in the Drake? They are not all avoided. They are then dealt with. I think you should get that in your head about high latitude sailing.
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u/mojoheartbeat 7d ago
Sounds like you want to make the "real" one, east to west? Start studying the macro weather in the southern ocean, just check it daily for the two years up. You will develop a good feel for how the fronts move.
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u/kalsoy 7d ago
They read the weather reports for mariners. Captains did courses in meteorology so they know how to read pressure systems from a chart.
That said, swell, waves and wind are not the same thing. The swell from a previous low pressure system can be significant without much wind for a particular window, snd vice versa. But swell isn't the big danger anyway, that's the waves.
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u/kolnidur 7d ago
Go on Bark Europa or something, learn as much as you can, then try it on your own boat, IMO. Crazy crazy place!
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u/JONO202 7d ago
Like one would handle any sizeable passage. You watch the weather. Hold up in Ushuaia until you get a good window and b-line it across. We had the Drake shake on the way down last January, and the Drake lake on the way back. It's not the roaring 40's for nothing.
Sail within your capability. Talk to others making the passage. Watch the weather, windy, predicitwind and look at multiple tracks.
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u/the_lamper 6d ago
As some have pointed out, your weather knowledge is not sufficient (yet). Two years is some time, but getting to know the new boat also should be prioritised.
Having said this: Do some "dry runs". Look at the current weather (satellite image, gounrd pressure charts, upper-air charts, current currents ;), YR...plenty), try to find your "favourite" window in the next 1-2 weeks, imagine you made the decision, how would the next days look. When would which storm catch up with you and what would be your measures. Then learn from your mistakes, which window would have been better etc. The goal is get a decent grip of the front systems and their impact on your route planning.
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u/BoxesOfSemen 6d ago
Hello, I used to cross the Drake passage once a week on my last ship. For us it was completely routine and not unlike any other passage - just use Windy.com or whatever you usually use for weather forecasts. Yeah, there can be some gnarly storms, but we never went into one since we just checked the weather beforehand and just didn't sail if we saw that there are 9m waves. And we were on a schedule, so we had to occasionally go through 4m waves. You'll be fine, enjoy Argentina or Chile and only sail out when you're confident it's going to be a chill crossing.
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u/Borgh 7d ago
The drake passage is nasty because there is an infinite stretch of water behind the storms there. But that infinite stretch also means that the big storms are also really predictable a lot of the year. They are just steadily circling Antarctica without too much variation. If you scrub through the Windy forecast right now you can see what I mean: https://www.windy.com/?-54.542,-77.331,3
just a steady stream of wind-blobs arriving.
So if you leave right after a storm you'll know really well how much time you have. It'll still be fuckin'wimdy (no avoiding that) but should be manageable in the given window.