Here’s my latest blog. Right on time and it’s about time.

What time is it?

What time is it where yóu are?

You can stretch time or beat time.

We all run out of time and we need more time. But what ís time, really?

Especially when you travel, knowing the time is of the essence. But time as we know it now is man-made and can be confusing. Here’s a short history of time.

Before the concept of minutes and hours was invented, of course time already existed. But time was measured by nature: the sun and the moon separated day from night. The seasons gave us a time to sow and a time to harvest. Animals knew when it was time to migrate. The tools with which humans measured time were the sun and the stars. When it was light, it was day time, at night it was dark and the moon was in the sky. People noticed constellations and the way they slowly shifted over time.

We learned more about navigation and timezones during a visit to the bridge.

Some 3,600 years ago it was the Babylonians who named the zodiac signs and it was they who discovered a rhythm in nature. Babylonians loved math and they are the ones who figured out that the sun moves 1º each day. Galileo would discover that same fact centuries later. Babylonians were fascinated by the number 60. Their measurements were all divisible by 60: a full circle is 360º, 60 seconds would make a minute, 60 minutes fitted into one hour and noon marked the highest point of the sun. To date, our math and time are still based on what the Babylonians discovered and decided.

Spring equinox was set based on the seasons and length of sun per day.

It was the Christian church that decided to set specific dates for certain Christian holidays like Easter. However, the earth is not a perfect circle and our system of time need some adjustments in hopes of keeping those specific dates set from year to year. The answer to make up for the slight discrepancies that crept up, was a leap year!

Everywhere, time was set locally based on the noon position of the sun. But the sun rises at different times depending on where you are. Local time worked great until people started traveling. Once people started exploring by ships, later on trains, there came a need to agree on what time it was in different locations.

Since London was considered to be the centre of the earth, in 1884, Greenwich was chosen as the starting point for time: 0º longitude. First the system of telling time based on GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) was created for mariners only. They figured out that the globe could be divided into 15º wedges: 24 x 15 = 360º. # of time zones….

Ships may determine their own time on board. Most ships adjust their clocks as they move across time zones. But cargo ships sometimes stay on their own, homeland, time and thus may experience the sun rising and setting at odd hours depending on their position on the globe.

During our cruise we mostly knew what day it was by stepping in the elevator. Floormats were changed daily to tell us the day of the week.

This system was pretty good for figuring out what time it was when explorers in the 1600’s landed on a distant island. But then the Portuguese explorer Magellan, the first one to circumnavigate the globe, sailed from the “Ocean Sea” (what they then called the Atlantic Ocean) around South America (through what is now known as the Strait of Magellan) in search of the Spice Islands, he meticulously kept track of the number of days. He did this so accurately that they indeed had the time correct when they finally arrived back in Portugal. Except they discovered that they were a full day off. That’s when they realized the need for the International Date Line.

This photo of us in the pool was taken at the moment that we crossed both the international dateline and the equator! Nico (left) is still in yesterday while Jai (right) is in today. I’m in the southern hemisphere while Kees, who took the photo, is still in the northern hemisphere! How cool is that?!

The nautical dateline was a straight line, just like all longitude lines. The International Date Line, however, is a different story. Some islands sit right on the line and did not want to be on one side, but preferred the other side. For instance, the Aleutian Islands would be a day ahead of the rest of Alaska to which they belong. Fiji islands are on either side and would be a day apart within the same country.

Samoa and Tonga are both east of the 180º line and so should be in the same time zone but Tonga deals mostly with New Zealand and wanted to be in the same time zone as New Zealand. So these islands demanded a ‘wrinkle in time’ - the line now veers left and back right before continuing straight. You can travel from Samoa to Tonga and have the same time, but a different date.

Golden Shellback Ceremony: the kissing of the fish.

To make this all the more fascinating, people have a tradition here. When you cross both the international date line and the Equator, you become a Golden Shellback. This naval tradition dates back centuries,. There are records from French ships in the 1600’s observing the tradition and there is evidence that it was celebrated by the crew on Captain Cook’s ship. It was just for fun and to alleviate boredom but it also signifies camaraderie and resilience of sailors. The pollywogs - those who cross the lines for the first time - are made to crawl the deck on their knees while getting ‘flogged’. Sailors are doused with a foul smelling ‘soup’ and greeted by King Neptune himself.

The ‘crew’ pollywogs were guarded by pirates.

On our cruise ship, pollywog crew members represented all of us newcomers as they crawled and endured the initiation ceremony until Neptune pronounced them, and all of us, to be true Golden Shellbacks.

But back to the dateline… That crooked dateline is also the reason why we have different dates at the same time on earth. During trip we had October 30 twice in a row - kind of like Groundhog Day. When one of the boys phoned home, I heard him say “I’m calling from tomorrow!” Time may be an ingenious concept but no system is perfect… It’s about time we learned all this!