Countries Across the Ocean from the U.S.

Name the countries that can be reached by sailing on a straight line of latitude from the 50 U.S. states.

Red indicates an overseas territory

Only includes countries that can be reached directly with no other countries in between

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Last updated: December 9, 2017

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First submitted	December 7, 2017
Times taken	18,369
Average score	71.4%
Rating	3.77

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Sailing East ...
AK, ME, WA	Canada
NH, MA, VA, NC, ME	Spain
NY, NJ, DE, MD, VA	Portugal
NC	Algeria
NC, SC, GA, FL	Morocco
SC	United Kingdom
FL	Bahamas
HI	Mexico

Sailing West ...
OR, WA, AK	Russia
CA, OR, HI	Japan
FL	Mexico
HI	China
HI	Taiwan
HI	Vietnam
HI	Philippines

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63 Comments

Level 87

Dec 8, 2017

What if you sailed through the strait of Gibraltar ?

Level 83

Dec 8, 2017

Yup, Algeria should be included, as well as Bahamas.

Level 66

Jan 9, 2018

What?.... Please explained this

+11

Level 92

Feb 22, 2018

Algeria just blew my mind.

Level 62

Apr 12, 2018

By sailing on a straight line of longitude you would not nit Algeria from NC.

Level 66

Apr 12, 2018

It's not a matter of "would", but "could". And, yes, you *could* by going through the Strait of Gibraltar.

Level 68

Apr 12, 2018

Yes, you are absolutely correct - sailing on a straight line of longitude will definitely not get you to Algeria.

Level 59

Apr 12, 2018

Yes, sailing in a straight line will definitely get you to Algeria from North Carolina..

Level 92

Apr 12, 2018

Let's address all of these:

1. Lines of longitude run north-south, so you're right on that one.

2. Sailing along a line of LATITUDE will indeed get you to a little chunk of Algeria through the Strait of Gibraltar. Check a map.

3. Sailing in a straight line (full stop) is not possible, unless you're going very deep underwater to account for the curvature of the earth.

Level 70

Jul 20, 2018

Definitely could hit Algeria from NC. If you leave NC at 35o 58' and travel along that line of Latitude West you would pass through the Straits of Gibraltar and land somewhere near Mostaganen in Algeria.

Level 90

Apr 8, 2019

Easiest way to check, put Google Earth at the Straits. Does that exact same latitude # hit the coasts of Algeria and NC? Done.

Level 66

Oct 20, 2020

You can definitely NOT travel from SC to Algeria. I tried what is supposed here en drew a line between SC 35°58' en Algeria 35°58' and that line goes straight through Spain and Portugal, even thought Lisbon.

Level 66

Oct 20, 2020

Sail in a straight line along latitude 35.96. That will take you from NC to Algeria

Level 66

Dec 8, 2017

Awaiting Reapproval!

Level 49

Jun 4, 2019

Please make a series out of this. This type of quiz is very enjoyable.

Level 78

Dec 8, 2017

Technically, if you sail east from Hawaii, you hit Mexico. I think Mexico needs to be included as well.

Level 78

Dec 8, 2017

And if you sail east from the Aleutian Islands, you hit Canada.

Level 78

Dec 8, 2017

One more...if you sail east from the southern tip of Maine, I believe you miss Canada and hit Spain.

Level 83

Dec 8, 2017

Or from Washington

Level ∞

Dec 8, 2017

This has been updated. I knew it would take a few tries to get right. Any more errors that need to be fixed?

Level 75

Apr 12, 2018

Hi. East from Florida, you could potentially hit Spain (Canary Islands)? From South Carolina you could also hit Portugal (Madeira)?

Level 70

Dec 9, 2017

It's easy to miss, but there's a line from Hawaii to Vietnam through the Qiongzhou Strait.

Level 70

Dec 9, 2017

Also, sailing west from Florida, you hit Mexico.

Level ∞

Dec 9, 2017

This has been updated. You'd have to start from a very specific point in Hawaii to reach Vietnam, but it is theoretically possible.

Level 83

Dec 9, 2017

It would have to be from just below the northwestern tip of the Big Island.

Level 70

Dec 9, 2017

One more that is highly dependent on where you consider the border between ocean and inland waters, is near the mouth of the Saint Croix River between Maine and Canada where you can sail west from Maine to Canada. While the waters are an estuary and the river is subject to Tidal bore at that point, I'm not entirely sure whether this would or should count as an ocean crossing.

Level 75

Dec 9, 2017

I was like, "you can't sail east from Washington!". D'oh!

Level 70

Dec 9, 2017

Actually, you technically can sail east from Washington across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to reach Vancouver Island in Canada. So, not entirely impossible!

Level 66

Dec 10, 2017

Seems a bit asymmetrical to include overseas territories as destinations (Bermuda, UK) but not points of origin (Guam, Wallis and Fortuna, US Virgin Islands, Guantanamo Bay, Puerto Rico, Marianna Islands).

Level 71

Apr 12, 2018

Definitely agree with this. I think you should either include all overseas territories (as destinations and points or origins) or ignore them entirely, which would only eliminate the Bermuda one. I would prefer the latter.

Level 80

Oct 16, 2019

Agreed, but why include a random French territory?

Level 73

Dec 10, 2017

Why only East and West? Why not South to include the Caribbean and South American countries, and or, any direction from Hawaii to include a heck of a lot of Pacific island nations?

Level 82

Apr 25, 2018

This quiz is about sailing along lines of latitude so can only mean east/west.

Level 25

Dec 10, 2017

Had expected France to be also on the list

Level 85

Dec 11, 2017

Too many mistakes, which have been already mentioned. Why five Points for this quiz? There are much better ones in the list under "recent user-created".

Level ∞

Dec 22, 2017

All the mistakes were already fixed by the time you commented.

Level 70

Dec 11, 2017

I know it says Ocean, but I don't see much of a reason to exclude getting to Canada across the Great Lakes as it's still a water border.

Sailing East from Michigan and Minnesota

Sailing West from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio (barely) and Michigan (at Sault-Ste-Marie)

Level 71

Apr 12, 2018

The name of the quiz says "across the ocean". The Great Lakes are not oceans. Not sure what your point is...

Level 69

Feb 20, 2018

Okay, I am stymied. What UK pieces-part do you hit sailing east from SC?

Level 66

Feb 20, 2018

Bermuda

Level 71

Feb 26, 2018

Algeria tripped me up, forgot about the Strait of Gibraltar

Level 81

Apr 12, 2018

good time limit. Got Philippines with 1 second to go.

Level 73

Apr 13, 2018

Agreed, it didn't give me as much time as usual to type every name in the book guessing.

Level 68

Apr 12, 2018

feeling dumb for not guessing Canada and Mexico....

Level 30

Apr 12, 2018

How is Algeria in??? but not ireland/ iceland/ mauritania and so on. lame quizz. typical american geography.

Level 63

Apr 12, 2018

lame quiz? because you don't know how to use a map or follow quiz instructions? Ireland and Iceland are well north of the US latitude-wise and Mauritania is south.

Level 74

Apr 12, 2018

The southernmost town in Iceland, Vík, is further north than Anchorage, Alaska. If you sailed west from Iceland you'd run smack into Greenland, and then Canada. The southernmost place in Ireland is at the same latitude as L'Anse-aux-Meadows, the northernmost point on Newfoundland Island. Europe is way further north than most Americans think, and the U.S. is way further south than most Europeans think.

Level 81

Apr 14, 2018

Yeah.. Americans with their superior knowledge of geography doing nothing to dislodge our prejudicial belief that we somehow are better at the subject than they are even though by our own words we just proved that we aren't.

typical

Level 90

Oct 6, 2018

Ireland is further north than Maine, the northernmost part of the U.S. East Coast, but Iceland is ridiculous. Whether the country's geography is typical or atypical, facts are facts.

Level 60

Sep 4, 2021

Level 20

Apr 12, 2018

Surely you'd imagine that you would hit Ireland before the UK

Level 60

Apr 12, 2018

You wouldn't hit Ireland before Bermuda though.

Level 94

Apr 12, 2018

And even if we're just talking about the British Isles, Ireland only blocks about half of Great Britain from the west. You can sail due east from the lizard peninsula (Cornwall), the extreme south of Wales (Cardiff, but not Swansea), and most of Scotland and miss Ireland entirely.

Level 74

Apr 12, 2018

This is correct. But even if you sailed due west from the very southernmost point of the Isles of Scilly (latitude +49.8632), you'd hit... Newfoundland. And not the southern part of Newfoundland, either... the Baie-Verte Peninsula, which is the little blob of land just east of the Great Northern Peninsula that sticks out of the top of the island like a feather. There's literally no part of the United States that goes that far north except Alaska.

Level 70

Jul 20, 2018

You can hit Gibraltar and that would count as UK.

Level 78

Aug 20, 2018

Nope, Gibraltar is on the eastern side of the Bay of Gibraltar. The western side of the bay is all Spain, and it comes further south than the most southern point of Gibraltar. It'd be impossible to go east along a line of latitude from anywhere in the US and hit Gibraltar without hitting Spain first.

Level 74

Apr 12, 2018

Latitude is a funky thing, because we're used to bad map projections that make things look bigger the further north you go, and climate that isn't latitude-dependent. But the southern tip of Greenland is only 60 miles north of the northern tip of Scotland, the southernmost point in Canada is essentially the same latitude as Rome.

Level 34

Apr 12, 2018

try my new quiz! :D

Level 90

Oct 6, 2018

How dumb was I wondering what could be across the ocean east from Alaska, Maine and Washington?

Level 90

Oct 6, 2018

You'd think the British would understand the Labrador Underlying Current to a lot of these indignant challenges, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Level 66

Oct 20, 2020

I used Google Earth to determine some more options...

You can sail east from SC and GA to the Canary Islands of Spain. Also from all the states on the east coast goes a line to Mauritania and Senegal. From SC GA and FA goes a line to Cape Verde. From all the other states on the east coast, you can sail to the Gambia. From DE to SC you can travel to Guinea. From ME to NY and from GA and FA you can sail to Sierra Leone. From FA and GA, you can sail to Liberia. From NC to FA goes a line to Angola, Namibia and South Africa. From NC you can reach the west coast of Australia!!! It just goes between Brazil and South Africa. From AK you can sail to Chile, Norway and Denmark (Greenland).

And there are many many more!!! Watch the map for North-America via this link. You need to look very well because there are a lot of lines who start in Mexico or Canada.

http://andywoodruff.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/sea-1700.jpg

You're welcome!!!

Level 66

Oct 20, 2020

I looked into these and from what I can tell, none of these can be reached by sailing in a straight line of latitude. The only one that could be possible is from Alaska, but from what I can tell, Canada and Russia block any route to Norway or Greenland.

Level 60

Sep 4, 2021

No diagonal lines

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