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| For years I had been racking my brains on where to spend New Year's Eve of the New Millennium - as a sailor and a navigator it would have to be geographically significant. I first thought of Latitude 0 and Longitude 0 - the equator and the Prime meridian, which is just of the coast of Africa -- Interesting place but the real place to be is Latitude 0 and Longitude 180, the Equator and the International Date line. This mean that I would be among one the first people in the world to see the new Millennium begin. Of course this location is not located on any land mass but is in the Pacific Ocean. | |
| The problem with this location is many fold:
getting people there, staying there and getting back while having a
floating party. So get out the charts and follow the international
dateline from pole to pole and the 180 Longitude only crosses a land mass
in three places 1) Siberia 2) Anatrica 3)Fiji. You can guess which one I
chose.
At Udu Point on Fiji's second largest island Vanua Levu, on the island of Rabi and on the garden island of Taveuni. |
|
| So this trip to Tahiti was just a stepping stone, although a very attractive and exciting one toward Fiji and then New Zealand. | |
| After spending a month in Hawaii it was time to
get underway. The repairs from the Transpac99 race were complete and provisioning
set in.
Crew was ready - Sailing on this leg would be Lowry Chamberlain and Kim Franz. We had planned on four as crew but "Kenney" dropped out at the last moment. |
|
The 180° meridian runs
through three locations in Fiji:
