Your next challenge: Point Nemo

Written by Marcela Rodriguez

Monday, 20 November 2006

If you’re looking for real adventure and a extreme challenge to your sailing habilities, then try to reach the Point Nemo.

Point Nemo will not appear in any standard map you have, because is the nickname of the "Pacific Pole of Inaccessibility."

A pole of inaccessibility marks a location that is the most challenging to reach owing to its remoteness from geographical features which could provide access. The term is a geographic construct, not an actual physical phenomenon, and is of interest mostly to explorers and conspiracy theorists. In plain language, Point Nemo means "The spot on planet earth that is most distant from land in any direction."

Captain Nemo Point Nemo was so named in reference to the captain in Jules Verne's Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, not Disney’s animated fish.

Looking at a globe, you'd probably guess that this theoretical point is located in the Southern Pacific, north of Antarctica and between South America and New Zealand. (Excellent guess, by the way.)

Taking into account the smaller islands dotting this stretch of water, Point Nemo is located roughly at the coordinates 48°00' S, 123°00' W.
It is around 1,450 nautical miles from this spot to:
• Ducie Island, in the Pitcairn Island Group,
• Motu Nui, an island off the SW coast of Easter Island and
• Maher Island, a speck of land north of Siple Island, which itself gets cozy with Antarctica via the Getz Ice Shelf.
You could think of Point Nemo as the official Middle of Nowhere, Water Version, and an awe-inspiring place to find oneself. For the modern solo sailor, his or her closest "neighbors" at Point Nemo may very well be orbiting astronauts.

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