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Firefly - Firefly crosses the International Date Line



Crossing the International Date Line, like transiting the Panama Canal, was another key milestone of Firefly's circumnavigation. Although it takes some thinking about to understand the technicalities - this one was over in a few seconds and Friday 30th May was crossed off the calendar and it immediately became Saturday 31st.


Leaving Niue our clocks were set at UTC -12, that being 11 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time, 12 hours behind British Summer Time. The Date Line will be crossed at some point before we reach Tonga so we decided to change the date as soon as we left in order to avoid any confusion regarding what day we will arrive. So we moved forward by 24 hours, the clocks were not changed and we are now at UTC +13, 12 hours in front of UTC and 13 hours in front of BST.


If our Birthday's had happened to be on 30th May, we may have done the change differently or if on a longer passage the 'spare' day could have been saved up until we were having a bad day - and then we could have ended it immediately!


The trip to Tonga is 245 nautical miles, so about 36 hours. We left early yesterday morning so that it would be one night at sea and if we could maintain about 7 knots would be in before nightfall. However, the wind dropped last night and we had to motor which has put us behind schedule. The wind is now back and we are goosewinged on starboard tack, the wind is a bit light so we are only averaging about 5 or 6 knots so the entry into Tonga, approaching from the north of Vavau will be in the dark - therefore we will go carefully to a sheltered anchorage called Port Morelle, drop the hook for the night and then head to Neiafu to check in on Monday morning.


We can also report that yesterday's grey weather has gone, today its sunny and we have this part of the Pacific Ocean to ourselves, we have seen no other vessels during this current passage.


Paul and Susie




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