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How do they deal with Time Zones on sea cruises?

I’ve been traveling across a few time zones recently and I’m suffering from a mild jet-lag as a consequence. This is a well known phenomena, when you’re changing time zones very quickly, with a help of an airplane. But how do you deal with all those strange time zones if you are in a middle of the ocean, like on a transatlantic ocean cruise? Do they just arbitrarily decide when they pass a certain time zone, or do they actually keep track of these things?

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I started searching around and soon I stumbled upon Tom Galli’s RedToeNail blog, where he writes how they solved this problem in his cruise:

These time zones at sea are interesting constructs. No one lives out here so what is the big deal. There is a six hour time difference between Miami and Tenerife and to smooth the time transition, the ship advances the clock one hour per day on six succeeding days. So we have 6 days of 23 clock hours in length. Time is really a weird phenomenon. Is it an element of nature or a construction of man? Einstein and Hawkins advocate the former while I remain uncertain. I nevertheless understand the importance of being on time. While a novice at the physics of time, I fully understand breakfast! That said; I must go and eat. Read full post

So there you have it. They just speed up time when they’re approaching their destination, but overall ignore the whole concept of time zones while on the sea.

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3 responses to “How do they deal with Time Zones on sea cruises?

  1. It’s also easier in a way that sea cruises are much slower, which makes it much easier to adapt to new timezone.

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