It all started here in Ottawa in the late afternoon of March 30, 2015. 5 hours to Vancouver via Airbus 320. 4 hour layover. 16 hours to Sydney via Boeing 777. When it was all said and done, we found ourselves in Australia two days later at 9:30 AM on April 1, 2015 – 25 hours total travel time and 15 hours ahead of where we started. Wow. March 31 never happened to us.
When we planned this voyage of discovery back in 2013, the concept of cruising back to Vancouver from Sydney had almost infinite appeal. The prospect of travel by air to start the voyage had almost infinite dread. Neither of us had ever flown so far and so long before. How would we cope with the discomfort and time change? After all we weren’t getting any younger.
It was surprisingly easy. A 16 hour time difference is really only 8 hours later to your body. The flight was long, but the majority of it was at night. Instead of the hasty 6 hour night of a Transatlantic flight, our night flight to Sydney had close to 18 hours of darkness. Plenty of time to put in the earplugs, put on the eyeshades and get some sleep.
Don’t get me wrong – we were pretty jet-lagged our first day in Sydney. However, we slept for 12 hours the first night and by our second day we were fine. And the rest of our journey (at least the sea part of it) was at 20 knots and took a month. I’m not anxious to repeat the first part anytime soon, though.