If I wanted to circumnavigate the world by water (boat) what is the shortest total distance around?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 26 Jul, 2023
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The original definition of “meter” was a distance such that there are 10,000,000 of the between the equator and the North Pole. Since that is one fourth of the way around the Earth, the total distance would be 40,000km. That is what’s known as a “normal” route (being perpendicular, or normal, to the equator); an equatorial route would be longer. Also, the current definition of the meter is slightly different, but 40,000km is still accurate to a few kilometers for the normal route.
Longer still would be an actual route, as there is generally land in the way. Of course, if you go to the North Pole, a route that crosses all meridians can be arbitrarily small. Thus, defining just what constitutes a “circumnavigation” tends to be complicated, with such stipulations as the route include at least one pair of antipodal points.
Using Google Maps, I get about 40850 km (Gibraltar – Suez Canal – Red Sea – around the tip of Sri Lanka – through the Malacca Strait – North of Borneo – South of the Philippines – straight across the Pacific – Panama Canal – straight across the Atlantic), so 41000 km is a good approximation.
I’m on my mobile right now, I’ll try to refine this when back on the desktop. There may be alternative ways around Indonesia that may shave off a little bit.
Note that this is using straight lines just avoiding obvious landmasses, not taken into account anything special like lanes of traffic in busy place and of course not taking into account prevailing winds or currents which would be relevant for sailing… or rowing.
- Is it necessary to book bus tickets from Gdansk to Kaliningrad in advance?
- Free Wi-Fi / available power / cashless food facilities in LAX airport?
There three reasonable ways to approach this.
- Use a tool such as OpenCPN to plot your desired course.
- Use the Jules Verne Trophy rules at approximately 40,000km.
- Use the Earthrace route, which transits the Panama and Suez canals at approximately 45,000km.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘