Tylers' Travel Southwest of Tutuila Island, American Samoa

At Sea

Trip Day Twenty-One: Friday, October 12, 2007

Between Pago Pago and Suva, Fiji

Near the International Dateline

Double Rainbow Off The Bow

It's not often that you get to see a complete rainbow, and this one was a double!
Granted that it was too close to get it all in one frame, so we did the next best thing and stitched two pictures together.

Sun Rise

The sun tells us that we were headed a little south of due west at 6:33 AM.

A Sea of Glass at 8:08 AM

We crossed International Dateline, probably during the night after our day at sea.
This is an imaginary line at the 180° meridian that allows travelers make an adjustment so that their calendar will match those of the local people after having traveled across the line when landing. This was a big problem for early circumnavigators, such as Ferdinand Magellan. And a curious effect of this is that air travelers flying west to east often arrive at their destination before they left!
Officially the ship did not recognize that there was an October 12^th at all. We simply went from Thursday, October 11^th to Saturday, October 13^th. Although I didn't record the actual time that we crossed the line, it wasn't before these early morning pictures were taken, so I went ahead and let them be dated October 12^th.

An Island of the Tonga Nation

October 13^th at 8:20 AM we passed by this small island. Well, we did change the calendar even though we actually didn't cross the International Dateline until sometime during the night. This outpost of the Tonga Nation is commonly known as Tin Can Island, but not because of any problem with trash. The reason for this name was that having no harbor, the people of this island couldn't get ships to stop there. So their floated their mail out to passing ships in tin cans that were somehow sealed and water-proof. This story, lends credence to the message in a bottle stories.
The island is very small, and it is inhabited.

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