02 December 2012; At Sea.

We are sailing with a speed of 16.5 knots on our way to Fanning Island. Going faster has no use as it would mean that we arrive around midnight. As Fanning Island is not known for its exuberant night life, there is no reason to go faster. Also the slower we go, the steadier the ride is as we have some long ocean swell rolling in from the East. The weather is now identical to that of the Caribbean Sea, moderate to fresh trade winds from the East and a low long rolling swell from roughly the same direction.  The only worrying thing is that tomorrow we will have more wind and if that stays until Fanning Island, then we might have a very wobbly day as far as the tender ride is concerned.  Still that is another day away. We first have to safely get over the date line tonight.

Note: the various blocks and bulges around the official dateline. all done to make it easier to live in a certain area or to belong to a certain group.

This dateline business is a bit unreal. The actual dateline (the 180o meridian) lies more than1000 miles to the West as we are currently sailing near the 158o meridian.  However politics do not always consider itself with the logistics of navigation. So in 1995, the president of the Line Island group decided that it would be better if all the islands would be in the same time zone. That could be accomplished by pushing the date line either to the West or to the East. The decision was to push the time zone east, so all the islands would be on the same day as Australia. In general Australia has a larger presence here than the USA, although Hawaii is somewhat closer than Australia itself.  Thus when we now travel south from Hawaii we sail through this “pushed to the East” time zone. If we did not call anywhere we could stay on the regular dates as we would sail out of it again fairly quickly. Now we are calling at Fanning Island, we have to do the day jump.

Although the South Pacific Islands are very much orientated towards Australia, it was an American who gave his name to this island, at least the Western name. Officially the name of the island is Tebueran in the Kiribati group, but most of us know it as Fanning Island. That name comes from Capt. Edmund Fanning of the American ship Betsy who on 11 June 1798 sighted the atoll. Consequently the island was named after him.  Later on, whalers visited and people began to settle here and then it was annexed by the British and much later on the Line Island group was established.  I think they are still part of the British Commonwealth system.

The island never gained much prominence and as a result we will be navigating around the island on charts, first drawn in the era of Captain Cook. With a major update by Captain A. Mostyn Field of Her Majesty’s Survey Ship HMS Penguin.  This gives us a challenge, as although these charts are very reliable, they are not necessarily in the same grid system as modern charts. So in relation to a modern chart, they might be a few miles off, just due to the reference points that were used in those days. So when we approach, we keep a visual eye on the horizon as with an average height of 10 feet above water, the island/atoll does not show up very well on the radar.

We will be calling there on December 5^th and after that we will have 2 x Dec. 6^th to make up for the last date of Dec 3^rd.  Today I apologized for those who will have their birthday on the 3^rd as they won’t. I also apologized to those friends who are going to celebrate the birthday of a friend on the 6th as they will have to buy presents twice.

So tonight we will put the clocks forward by 24 hrs which means we will not do anything at all, just change the day from Dec. 2^nd to December 4^th the most interesting part is that some of our software for bookkeeping and accounting will not be able to deal with this. So an irate Purser and night auditing officer have already been sending out emails advising them that our network systems are staying on 2,3,4,5,6 and 7 December.  Modern Technology can be wonderful some times.