June 14 At sea between Hawaii and California
We arrive in Los Angeles tomorrow morning, continuing our Visit the USA portion of the World Cruise. I did find something interesting.
As I was retrieving our track from the Magellan Triton I keep out on the verandah I noticed our track (blue line) isn't following the shortest path (yellow line). The yellow line is the Great Circle Route, the true shortest distance across the sphere of the globe.
You can Google Great Circle Route if you want the explanation. It's the reason you go way up into Canada flying from New York to Tokyo.
So being curious, I asked the Staff Captain (essentially the executive officer) and later the Captain for the reason. By my guesstimate it was about 50 statute miles shorter. Their explanations were essentially, "It;s not worth the effort." By maintaining a constant heading the wind and seas remain in a consistent direction -- and this trip has not been on a pacific ocean. It would force us into a slightly more northern position, where the weather could be worse.
But I think the simplest reason is that cruise ships seldom make long ocean crossings. Mostly they tool along the coast where the direct line is the fastest. Even on this 180-day trip this is the only time that the GCR would offer an advantage. Our crossing of the Atlantic, crossing the equator, had no GCR advantage. So the simplest thing is to just follow the straight on the Mercator projection map.
We arrive in Los Angeles tomorrow morning, continuing our Visit the USA portion of the World Cruise. I did find something interesting.
You can Google Great Circle Route if you want the explanation. It's the reason you go way up into Canada flying from New York to Tokyo.
So being curious, I asked the Staff Captain (essentially the executive officer) and later the Captain for the reason. By my guesstimate it was about 50 statute miles shorter. Their explanations were essentially, "It;s not worth the effort." By maintaining a constant heading the wind and seas remain in a consistent direction -- and this trip has not been on a pacific ocean. It would force us into a slightly more northern position, where the weather could be worse.
But I think the simplest reason is that cruise ships seldom make long ocean crossings. Mostly they tool along the coast where the direct line is the fastest. Even on this 180-day trip this is the only time that the GCR would offer an advantage. Our crossing of the Atlantic, crossing the equator, had no GCR advantage. So the simplest thing is to just follow the straight on the Mercator projection map.
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