Duration of Pacific ocean crossing

Phyllo

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Hi everyone (my first post -- palms are sweaty),

Does anyone know what would be the typical duration for a ship crossing the Pacific ocean?

More specifically, my story features an aircraft carrier journeying from Indonesia to Washington State. I suspect there could be several variables (e.g. weather) but just wondering what might be a typical duration (I'm clueless).

Thanks.
 

RJK

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Carriers always steam with an escort group. Those smaller ships would be conventionally fueled, and would travel at their most economical speed, probably 22 knots. The group would need to refuel several times, including stops in the Philippines and Hawaii. So add 4 days for port visits. Measure the mileage between ports, divide by 22 MPH (1 knot is 1 nautical mile per hour). Divide by 24, then add the 4 days mentioned above. You should be close.
There are many variables. Storms and high seas would slow down the destroyers to under 15 knots. They may require course changes to avoid the worst of the storms. Other variables would be military exercises during the voyage. Anti submarine exercises, flight ops, gunfire training, man-overboard, search and rescue.
 

PeterL

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These days, if they wanted to get there fast, then it would still take weeks. Please specify the year and whether they want to get there fast. These days many naval ships can do thirty to forty knots or faster, but that kind of speed would use huge amounts of fuel. For general purposes they might run at twenty. Without knowing where in Indonesia they would start from, I'll use Jakarta, which is about 8500 miles. So it would take about 12 days at 30 knots or 18 days at twenty.
 

Phyllo

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Wow, that's incredible information. Thanks.

For what it's worth, this is a new Nimitz-class carrier leaving from an island west of Sumatra and not looking to get to the States too fast. Basically, they're making a delivery (I know, I know ... but it's meant to be funny) and trying to do so securely.

I'll add in about the escort group, since that would increase security and time.
 

Noah Body

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Carriers always steam with an escort group. Those smaller ships would be conventionally fueled, and would travel at their most economical speed, probably 22 knots. The group would need to refuel several times, including stops in the Philippines and Hawaii. So add 4 days for port visits. Measure the mileage between ports, divide by 22 MPH (1 knot is 1 nautical mile per hour). Divide by 24, then add the 4 days mentioned above. You should be close.
There are many variables. Storms and high seas would slow down the destroyers to under 15 knots. They may require course changes to avoid the worst of the storms. Other variables would be military exercises during the voyage. Anti submarine exercises, flight ops, gunfire training, man-overboard, search and rescue.

Just make sure when you get the mileage you get it in nautical miles vs. statute miles. If you have statute miles, know now that each knot is 1.15 (statute) miles per hour.
 

Griesmeel

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Just a heads-up on a bit of navigation.
There is a difference between a straight line on a Mercator projection nautical chart and the shortest distance between points on the earth's globe. The latter is the great circle and is significantly shorter at higher lattitudes compared to sailing a fixed course, and the more the course is east-west oriented, the greater the difference. A great circle is a circle that divides a globe into 2 equal halves, the equator and parralells do this by nature (hence courses north-south in general and east-west on or close to the equator do not need to be taken into account).
Generally in shipping, the course is altered at intervals to aproximate the great circle.
In your case it might be interesting to take this into account on the last leg of the journey. When sailing near and parallel to the equator at the beginning it will not matter much.
I don't have the calculations for this handy, it's been a long time since I was tought, but I'm sure there is something out on the web if you feel like going into detail.

Also, maybe it's helpfull to know: A nautical mile equals an arcminute on the earth's surface ( 40000km / (360*60) ) 1852 meters.

Sail on!