Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 07/20/2008 - 18:12
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Ocean Dynamics Beaufort Sea

I noticed that the ship's position on the web link you gave is given at times expressed as UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, formerly known as GMT).  In your reply to the last post when you gave your position and time, you said 22:00--that is also UTC, correct?  Will you be able to tell when you have crossed over into the next time zone going west, and your local time is 7 hrs behind UTC, rather than 6, like it is now?

Love, 

Your nerd husband

Mon, 07/21/2008 - 10:49

Gerty Ward

Hi "nerd husband,"
UTC is "universal time, coordinated" is atomic time with seconds added at irregular intervals to compensate for the earth's slowing rotation. In navigation universal time is sometimes known as zulu, referring to zone description of zero hours (in the amatuer radio phoentic alphabet Z is zulu) and is used to avoid confusion over daylight saving time and time zones.
While I was on the bridge yesterday, Captain McNeil was quoting time in Zulu while making arrngements to meet another ship.
All that being said, we moved out clocks back 1 hour at 0000 last night (?). We are now on CDT. As I type, it is 13:45. I will ask the 3rd Officer why we are on this time and let you know.
 Thanks for asking,
xxx 
Gerty