Vendée Globe

When Phileas Fogg, the hero of Jules Verne's novel, decided to go around the world in eighty days, he did not know that the story would end happily, or that it would be a success thanks to the longitude of Australia and New Zealand.

As he returned to his London club, Fogg actually believed he had lost by one day, but it was thanks to the International Date Line that he won his wager. By going around the world from west to east, he had in fact ‘gained’ a day.

The need for an international date line was imposed by necessity. When Magellan sailed around the world for the first time, the navigator, as a good sea captain, kept diligent records. Yet when the crew returned to Spain, they were surprised to find they were a day out from their friends who had stayed at home. By sailing around the world from east to west and living on local time, they had in fact been away for one day less than they had counted… The problem, although perfectly understandable given the knowledge of the time, nevertheless provoked a lot of sophisticated debate — to the point that it became necessary to send someone to see the Pope.  Thankfully today none of the Vendée Globe competitors will need dispensation from the head of the Catholic Church to justify their sailing time.

To deal with this problem, they came up with the concept of a date line.  As Greenwich offered the universal reference time, on the other side of the world 180°E or 180°W, became the date line. As our sailors cross the famous line on 23rd December, they will have to put the date back to 22nd December in order to let time run normally.  This has absolutely no importance to the race time, but it must feel brutal.  Imagine that if the skippers cross at Christmas, once they cross the line they would have to re-wrap all their presents and wait another 24 hours before discovering again what Father Christmas has left for them.  They will not receive twice as many presents, as the date line has nothing magical about it.

In practice the line is meaningless, with its consequences only felt by those crossing the imaginary division. For those that live in the area, geographers had no hesitation in distorting the line, which is not straight: the 180° meridian leaves New Zealand and Fiji to the west, while the Aleutian Islands (a US dependency) are to the east.  If this was not the case, you can imagine the difficulties of living on the date line, as you move from one side to the other, you would have to keep changing the date.  This could make even most grounded person feel a little schizophrenic. The concept so grabbed author Umberto Eco, that it was in fact the very scenario dealt with in his novel, The Island of the Day Before.

One minor debate remains: Is the race record set by Vincent Riou on PRB with a time of 87 days 10h and 47 minutes real?  By turning the calendar back as he crossed the date line, maybe the winner of the 2004-2005 Vendée Globe actually sailed around the world in 88 days without any of us noticing?

PF Bonneau
 

Infos précédentes :