4th Dea Day to NZ - Day 38

Crossing the Line - Brunch on the Pool Deck - The international date line (IDL) crosses from the North to South Poles at approximately 180 degrees longitude and marked the boundary on the globe between consecutive calendar dates. This completely imaginary line helps keep everyone’s calendars aligned. If it is Monday east of the IDL, then it is Tuesday to the west of it. Put another way westward travel crossing the IDL jump ahead 24 hours, losing a day; on an eastbound voyage, travelers fall behind, gaining a day. It is the inevitable result of dividing the globe into time zones: in the simplest terms, members of the International Meridian Conference - attended by 26 nations in 1884, knew there had to be a line on the earth where the 24 time zones were “reset.” The IDL was invented and “drawn” on the opposite side of the globe from the prime meridian in Greenwich, England. But the IDL and its adjacent time zones were not bound by international law, maritime or otherwise. Several South Pacific island nations, such as Kiribati, were spread across archipelagos that straddled the 180 degree line. In order for these countries to stay on the same time zone, the IDL was redesigned to zig zag around them. It all goes to prove Einstein theory that, particularly around the IDL, time is relative. A special Viking Bunch for crossing the dateline in the pool and Wintergarten.Read more