Crossing the International Dateline

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Day 25 - February 8, 2007, Thursday, Crossing the International Dateline

Time: 8:00 am (1:00 pm CST)
Latitude: 15 degrees 50.74 minutes S
Longitude: 175 degrees 21.19 minutes W
Speed: 21.6 knots
Distance traveled from FLL: 8989 nautical miles
Weather: 84 degrees / 83% humidity, Partly cloudy

This might be the only year of our lives that we don’t have a February 9th! Yesterday was February 8th and today is February 10th! The International Dateline is an imaginary line extending between the North Pole and the South Pole that arbitrarily demarcates each calendar day from the next. It corresponds along most of its length to the 180th meridian of longitude but deviates eastward through the Bering Strait to avoid dividing Siberia and then deviates westward to include the Aleutian Islands with Alaska. South of the equator, another eastward deviation allows certain island groups to have the same day as New Zealand. This imaginary line is a result of the worldwide use of timekeeping systems arranged so that local noon corresponds approximately to the time at which the sun crosses the local meridian of longitude. When crossing the Dateline on an easterly course, one will experience the same day twice; however, when crossing it on a westerly course as we are, one loses a day. So we have completely skipped February 9th!

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