The wind is blowing 60 knots, a Beaufort Scale 11, known as a ‘violent storm,’ and the ship is rolling past 35 degrees – as steep as a black diamond ski run. In one lurch, my dresser rips loose from the wall, crashes across the room in semidarkness, and splinters against an opposing wall, flinging my drawers – in both senses of the word – all over the floor. Bracing myself and peering out the porthole, I can discern, between 40-foot-high waves, the magnificent figure of a lone albatross riding the storm. The bird’s wings are at full stretch, embracing the elements. It must be really flying.

A few years ago, a grey-headed albatross with a GPS chip was tracked skirting a Drake Passage low-pressure system north of the Antarctic Peninsula; it averaged 79 miles per hour for nine straight hours, apparently while also foraging for food. Another albatross circled the entire Southern Ocean, rivalling the world’s fastest yacht racers, in a mere 46 days. Just imagine this feat – rest a fingertip below Cape Horn and then spin a globe all the way around.

Albatrosses, like downhill skiers, seldom go straight. They are the champions of a flight style called dynamic soaring. Using gravity and wind gradients, these birds carve elegant, efficient lines across some of the world’s most turbulent oceans. With this method, an albatross can glide a thousand miles without once flapping its wings.

Watching the albatross in the storm, I’m jealous that it will probably reach South Georgia Island well before I do. The bird delicately traces one wingtip along a wave and then banks abruptly upward, turns, and powers into a flat glide with the wind howling at its tail. Our ship rolls in its wake. This creature could be older than me. I wonder what it’s thinking about—its chick at South Georgia, or its mate, or the weather, or nothing at all.