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Inspired by a recent question. If I want to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a boat, what are the shortest and longest possible crossing sites?

Where crossing = going from one continent to another where there is no land bridge (i.e. You can walk from North America to South America)

I first thought about going from Southern tip of South America to Antarctica, this is around 600 miles (1,000KM). Not sure if that would 'count' as crossing the Atlantic the Pacific, both or something else.

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This is pretty easy to work out from online maps - I make the shortest distance 2520km from the Cape Verde Islands to Sao Jose, Brazil, or 2844km from Cap Skirring, Senegal if you want to go mainland-mainland. The longest would be going North-South - roughly 15500km from Greenland to Antartica...

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    I get 2882 km (1556 nm) from Touros to Freetown, and 2508 km (1354 nm) from Touros to Lobo Tantum (using PROJ.4 tools with WGS84 ellipsoid). I'm not sure the concept of "longest crossing" is meaningful - where does the Arctic Ocean begin?
    – Toby Speight
    Nov 1 '18 at 18:22
  • A long, uninterrupted Great Circle is from Antarctica to Iceland, which comes out at 15795 km (8528 nm).
    – Toby Speight
    Nov 1 '18 at 18:26
  • @TobySpeight My figures were just from Google maps, soprobably not as precise as yours!
    – Nick C
    Nov 2 '18 at 9:57
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    @TobySpeight it sounds like you should post your own answer.
    – James Jenkins
    Nov 2 '18 at 10:59

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