Less than a thousand

Caramor - sailing around the world
Franco Ferrero / Kath Mcnulty
Fri 20 Apr 2018 19:23
12:48.8S 123:20.6W

Less than a thousand nautical miles to go. Hurrah!

“Humph” I hear the cynics and mathematically inclined amongst you thinking. “It’s not a special number of itself. It’s not part of a binary progression like 1024, or a prime number, indivisible by any number other than itself, or anything along those lines.”

Nonetheless, ‘less than a thousand’ is significant on Caramor. This is because in our base ten counting system it takes more than three digits to describe any number greater than 999. The GPS repeater in the cockpit only has three digits. (The GPS at the navigation desk has five.) So for the last 4,255NM the repeater has been reading 999.

Now it can drive us potty by constantly reminding us how far we have left to go. As I glance up, 943 ... 942 ...

I think I preferred 999.

Post by Franco