The Last Great Sailing Feat
This September of 2008, both the Northwest Passage (through the Canadian Arctic) and the Northern Passage (above Russia and Siberia) are clear of ice and passable by sailboat. This brings up the possibility of sailing around the world by passing through both the Arctic and the Antarctic. I do not believe this has ever been done.
What would the “official” requirements be, to accomplish this last great sailing feat?
There are four possible routes:
1) The Northwest Passage and the Cape of Good Hope;
2) The Northwest Passage and Cape Horn;
3) The Northern Passage and the Cape of Good Hope; and
4) The Northern Passage and Cape Horn
Choices 2 and 3 keep you in constantly in either the Western or the Eastern Hemisphere, so does that disqualify those routes as “around the world”. Actually none of the routes are perfectly “around the world”, but neither is the normal east-west route, currently accepted as sailing around the world.
What do you think?
as long as you cross the whole longitude then it's RTW?
As long as the route passes over two antipode points (a straight line connecting the points crosses Earth's center) it is true RTW, regardless the route.
The WSSRC has a conventional
round the world
route starting and ending in Europe, but this is quite arbitrary.