The Antimeridian

I love Greenwich, every time we go back to the old country we visit Greenwich, the Observatory, the story of Longitude, the Harrison clocks. The sheer amount of seafaring history all in one place is a wonderful thing to behold.
Standing astride the Greenwich Meridian I had never really put any thought into what goes on on the other side of the planet at 180 degrees.
Putting our waypoints in the chart plotter for our trip north the other day we realised we would be sailing across and back over the Antimeridian going from 179 degrees some minutes East to 179 degrees some minutes West and back again.

OOOh exciting - technically we will be crossing over the date line - or where the date line should be  -I guess it got moved to allow countries to share the same day as its actually a bit over to the East of where we will be sailing.