Drake Passage - fragment from Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Reading this part, I found this part fascinating, in particular because Shackleton and his most-skilled crew members sailed these waters 100 years ago in a 22 ft long open deck boat without appropriate equipment, food, clothing. Nonetheless, they made it all safe. WOW!!!

"This, then, was the Drake Passage, the most dreaded bit of ocean on the globe - and rightly so. Here nature has been given a providing ground on which to demonstrate what she can do if left alone. The results are impressive.
It begins with the wind. There is an immense area of persistent low pressure in the vicinity of the Antarctic Circle, approximately 67º South latitude. It acts as a giant sump into which high pressure from farther north continually drains, accompanied by almost ceaseless, gale-force, westerly winds. In the prosaic, often studiously understated language of the U.S. navy's Sailing Directions for Antarctica, these winds are described categorically:
"There are often hurricane intensity and wind gust velocities sometimes attaining to 150 to 200 miles per hour. Winds of such violence are not known elsewhere, save perhaps within a tropical cyclone. "
Also in these latitudes, as nowhere else on earth, the sea girdles the globe, uninterrupted by any mass of land. here, since the beginning of time, the winds have mercilessly driven the seas clockwise around the earth to return again to their birthplace where they reinforce themselves or one another.
The waves thus produced have become legendary among sea-faring men. They are called Cape Horn Rollers or "graybeards." Their length has been estimated from crest to crest to exceed a mile, and the terrified reports of some mariner have placed their heights at 200 feet, though scientists doubt that they very often exceed 80 to 90 feet. How fast they travel is largely a matter of speculation, but many sailormen have claimed their speed occasionally reaches 55 miles an hour." Alfred Lansing, fragment from ENDURANCE Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

I really enjoyed reading this book and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for one of the best adventure/survival stories of the century.

Here is some video coverage from the place described above:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jld5pIUKhCE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkGH98-xh3M
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=185_1291851093