With the web and the world being a 24hr, 360 degree longitudinal environment I struggle constantly with time when travel. Although my internal clock and sensibilities go into what I call ‘boat time’ (a near timeless state) I have to be constantly aware of clock and planet time. For navigation and communications I have to have a highly accurate idea of Greenwich mean time (GMT), Universal Coordinated Standard Time (UST), or Zulu time (the Greenwich line goes through Zulu Land). They are actually all the same, based on the prime meridian, except I feel that ‘universal’ is a bit presumptuous. This is also the 0 degree line for longitude.
If my chronometers are off by one second that equates to one nautical mile (6020 feet) of error in my celestial navigation position or one degree of longitude. One or two nm’s are acceptable. One or two minutes (60-120 nm’s) of timing error will put me on a reef or miss an entire island altogether. The entries that follow are all in local (boat) time at the time they are written unless noted otherwise.
Dan and I are still wrestling with how we note our time stamped entries on this blog. Since we are 1/4 of the world apart right now (6 hrs) you may notice a discrepancy in the timing of some of our entries as we file them at our own relative local time. Who knows what the internet and our own personal computers do with that. Maybe the answer for us, and our dear readers, would be a gadget on the cover page, linked to the atomic clock, that looks like a bunch of news room clocks with times for Dan, myself, New York, the Dali Lama, the Pope and Zulu time. That way we can dispense with the confusion caused by the spinning of the globe.
Example: as I post this blog on the web it’s 15:47 HST (3:47 pm in Hawaii), 9:47 pm in Michigan where Dan is and the preview of the page says: July 22, 2009, 1:47 am. That would put ‘Desire’s position somewhere around Libia. It smells like Hawaii but the math says not… Go figure…
Compiled @ 7:54 AM 7/21/09 (090622-0754PST, minus 10hrs Zulu) –
<Thats 07:54am Hawaii Standard Time or 10 hours behind Zulu time.>
To make it even more complicated when the mainland goes to ‘Daylight Savings Time’ (what are they really saving?) HST stays the same but mainland time changes.
