RECORD TIME ESTIMATOR

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AVERAGE SPEEDS - The table above tells us that we'd need to be traveling at 18 knots continuously to comfortably circumnavigate the world in under 80 days. This is the fabled Phileas Fogg challenge in the famous novel by Jules Verne.

The Earth's equatorial circumference is 24,901.55 miles or 40,076 km. However, when taking measurements passing through the poles, that distance decreases to 24,859.82 miles. The nautical mile or knot, is a unit of speed equal to approximately 1.15078 miles per hour on land (1.852 km). In calculations this gives us a built in safety margin of around 15%.

The Earth's shape allows for slight variations in its circumference. Instead of having a perfectly spherical shape, the Earth is an oblate spheroid. Due to its shape and the variations in its circumference, it is faster to fly around the Earth passing through its poles rather than flying around its circumference. The Earth's size is dwarfed by other planets in the solar system, including Jupiter, with an equatorial circumference of 279,118 miles, and the sun, which has an equatorial circumference of 2,720,000 miles.

RECORD HOLDER - On the 4th of May 2012, history was made, as Raphael Domjan, at the helm of a giant of a catamaran powered only by solar panels crossed the finishing line at Monaco to become the first electric boat to sail around the world. MS Tûranor PlanetSolar, known under the project name PlanetSolar, was (@ 2018) the largest solar-powered boat in the world. The vessel was launched on the 31st March 2010, also going into the Guinness Book of World Records with a time of 584 days to better by any contender. The project was mostly financed by Immo Stroeher, the owner of the boat.

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