Let’s say you’re an impossibly intrepid around-the-world explorer with a boat. You’ve done the Atlantic. You’ve done the Pacific. What’s left? What, you might wonder, is the longest distance one can sail in a straight line without hitting land? Unless you have an advance geography degree or very, very advanced spatial skills, you’ll probably be surprised to find that the longest possible straight sail goes from Pakistan to Siberia and it looks like this. Wait, what?

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2. Why the World's Longest Straight-Line Sail Isn't Exactly Straight

3. Let’s say you’re an impossibly
intrepid around-the-world
explorer with a boat. You’ve done
the Atlantic. You’ve done the
Pacific. What’s left? What, you
might wonder, is the longest
distance one can sail in a straight
line without hitting land? Unless
you have an advance geography
degree or very, very advanced
spatial skills, you’ll probably be
surprised to find that the longest
possible straight sail goes from
Pakistan to Siberia and it looks
like this. Wait, what?

4. "Ken,” you are going to say “that’s
not a straight line!” Well, it is and
it isn’t. You certainly can’t lash
your tiller at a certain compass
direction and steer along the
same course from Pakistan to
Russia. In fact, this course
requires you to change compass
bearing continuously. Look:
you’re traveling southwest when
you leave Karachi, Pakistan, but
by the time you arrive at the
chilly Kamchatka
Peninsula, you’re heading
northwest.

5. But this course is a “straight line” in
the sense that it marks the
shortest path between Pakistan
and Russia. (Well, technically,
the shortest path would be a
similar land route that filled in
the “gap” in the arc over Central
Asia. But this follows that route
in the opposite direction.) Don’t
believe me that this is a direct
path? Get a globe and a piece of
string and try it out. Alternately,
watch this video. Did I just blow
your mind?

6. This kind of path is called a “great
circle.” You plot a great circle
between two points on a sphere by
imagining the plane that would slice
through both points and the center
of the sphere. The intersection of
that plane and the Earth is the great
circle. They’re incredibly useful tools
in navigation, because they show
the shortest distance between two
points. Americans traveling to
Europe are often surprised to find
that they’re going by way of Canada
and Iceland. But the outward
“bulge” of the Earth if you head due
east means that the northerly trip is
actually a shortcut!

7. It’s amazing to me that this particular
great circle exists, because it goes
almost 20,000 miles without hitting
land. That’s about 80 percent of the way
around the world. Look how you have to
thread the needle between Tierra del
Fuego and the Antarctica
Peninsula, between Africa and
Madagascar, between the Near Islands
and the Rat Islands of the Aleutians. If
you do want to sail this route, I
recommend starting in Kamchatka, to
take advantage of favorable west-to-
east winds. Watch out for pack ice off
Antarctica, and sassy pirates with
haunted eyes off East Africa. They might
want to be the captain now.

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