Team member Adam Brown, K2ARB, (who has been to Antarctica twice), gave us a link to an awesome web site that shows several different weather and sea condition factors, all plotted on a gorgeous animated map.  If you go to this site:

https://www.windyty.com/?waves,-34.008,313.166,1

You will see that the waves are between 10 and 20 feet in the vicinity of the Braveheart (with the VP8 Team) and that the wind is blowing at 24 – 28 knots, which is about 32 mph. Now lets look at what is going on near Heard Island:

The wind is a bit calmer as are the waves near Heard Island, but West of Kerguelin there is an obvious disturbance that is about the same as what the VP8 Team is experiencing.