Obviously the world is round.
But deep down inside, all those years of lieing and oppression by the church have left their scars in our brains. And at school there were always those big flat maps on the wall with nicely delineated edges. They taught us that Marco Polo went East and Christopher Columbus went west but not a lot about those who went “all the way round”.
Even Garmin – who you would expect to be experts – suggest that there might be an edge to fall off. The map they supplied with our tracker goes East or West from London but stops beyond New Zealand going one way and Polynesia in the other direction.
Today was the day we were going to find out what really happened at “the edge”. Today we were due to reach 180 degrees west. The place where the western world stops and – supposedly- the Far Far East begins.
We both sat watching the degrees and minutes increase on the navigation system and “the edge” get closer on the Garmin.
179 degrees 99.999 minutes West arrived. And a second later we were in the East. Everything outside looked exactly as before and Garmin solved their “flat earth problem by “beaming” us across the map to the other side of their map.
We celebrated having sailed half way round the world with wine and biscuits as Artemis continued heading across the open ocean towards Australia.
Wow. Not everyone can get to see that