The voyage around the perimeter of "Antarctica" has been attempted and desribed as incomparably longer than a voyage at the corresponding longitude in the so-called northern hemisphere. (See the informative flat earth book entitled 'Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe?' for expansion on this. I photocopied mine at the library through inter-library loan.)
The fact is sphericism is a theory whose advocates twist facts to meet their pre-conceived ideas. I am primarily thinking of the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinate system followed by Gerhardus Mercator and company. (I realize latitude lines have predecessors going all the way back to the "climes" even used by ancient flat earthers and which I am hardly disputing. The modern "fixed" system based on Greenwich is the subject of my ire.) Since the sixteenth century a lot of people automatically assume the world is spherical just because the model of that school of cartographers indicates all the so-called "exact" distances from any point to another point on their scale of the world. Small irregularities in this are typically blown off when they are encountered in actual computation of distance. How about if they were off?
Two damnable good reasons people for the most part do not believe in unchartered islands and seldom venture to such is they rule out the possibility due to their uncritical acceptance of Mercatorean style models, and modern western education and media systems scoff at it.
Widespread uncritical assumption that the shape of the world corresponds to some form of Mercator's fabricated system has limited not only thought in the quest for truth and knowledge, but as a consequence also actual exploration of those geographical areas not coming within the bounds of the artificial mercatorean model.
A prominent example from a relevant and analagous subject:
(The following is not a divergence, but supports the above statements as will be seen.)
The leading cryptozoologist Loren Coleman wrote a very informative book entitled "Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep." In an appendice of this book, he tackles the question as to why the reporting of sea serpents has been on the decline. To summarize, the amount of ships going out to sea in the oceans these days is on the decline as well. It is not the quantity it used to be at its height. There is less exploration, and that exploration is more specialized research. The ships that do go to sea these days do not explore like those that did earlier. The ocean going ships of today follow well travelled ocean shipping lanes which most of the ships use. The amount of activity in these well defined areas is a repellent to sea serpents and much aquatic life in general including those which are quite unusual to modern men. Also, disbelief in their existence and the mockery that ensues are hampers to sea serpents ever being reported. Coleman quotes a navy veteran concerning his observance of a sea serpent in the northern Atlantic while Officer of the Deck on the bridge. The bridge personnel agreed the monster was not a whale, but the bottom line is that it was never reported. I myself was in the US Navy until earlier this year attached to a submarine. On the submarines I have been on (and I stood watch in the Control room), the sonar supervisor made reports to the Officer of the Deck (via an energized circuit). Whenever the supervisor reported "Conn, sonar detects biologics, bearing ____," everyone always blew it off as a whale. The most that would happen is the Officer of the Deck would order a course change if it was in our path. Everyone assumes things without seeing them or investigating. It is no surprise sea serpent reportings are on the decline.
However, Coleman quoted the logbook of the voyage that a handful of guys took on a large raft they built departing Lima, Peru across the Pacific Ocean to the Far East in 1946. They did not use the usual shipping lanes. They encountered first hand a great number of gigantic sea serpents and uncommon and gargantuan marine animals. The well travelled ocean shipping lanes are not the place to see these things, folks. It's like taking a poll on George Bush's popularity by interviewing his mother.
By the same token, unchartered islands and seas are not to be discounted merely becuase the world models in most reference books provide no room or thought to the subject.
- Dionysios