Darren asks: What time is it?

A selection of the clocks on board RRS Discovery

So after being bullied into it I'll write a post for the blog. Which is strange really, as we've recently been sent details about anti-bullying training (maybe my colleagues haven't had time to do that course yet!).

Anyway, what shall I say? How about the problems of timezones when at sea?

Things shouldn't be complicated, but with us crossing several timezones - and hence having several clock changes - as we go across the Atlantic it can get confusing when trying to keep track of the time at home relative to the ship's time. To compound matters, all scientific time recording uses GMT as the timezone.

At the start of the cruise we had two timezones to think about: the ship matched the UK and both were on British Summer Time (GMT+1), and the instruments were on GMT. Then to adjust for daylight hours the ship time was changed to match GMT - still only two timezones to worry about.

Going further west it got more complicated and ship time went back another hour, so we then had GMT-1, GMT and BST to contend with. All this can be readily resolved during the day, but when the fog of sleep is still lifting you worry that you got it wrong when setting your alarm. "Have I missed the start time for the piece of work we're doing today?" Or more importantly for some: "Have I missed breakfast?".

We've now come across a new problem, which although may be useful at home, just adds to the confusion here. Last night the UK's clock's switched from BST to GMT, and apparently so did many people's mobile phones. A mobile may be of no use to make calls when at sea, but for many of us it's our alarm clock, so when it automatically changes timezone and goes back an hour (despite all settings suggesting it shouldn't) then some people were caught out for our 05:30 start. Again the thought processes are slow in the morning and it took a good while for some to fathom why they were late. There was even an accusation made of someone changing someone else's phone time!

Me? I can just be smug that I somehow spotted the problem when setting my alarm last night.

Darren Rayner