I should've looked at a globe also but never dealt w this counterintuitive situation before and a whole host of reasons I listed

plus we never had coordinates for these ships before after they left AIS range 100 miles out-

and since the ship left on a southerly course until out of initial AIS range- straight to Ningpo on a 2 dimensional map-that set me and most everybody else up-and made the sudden trip N make no sense absent the new fert angle

still seems illogical but I have to keep reminding myself of the mountain analogy w the earths curvature a huge huge mountain thats easier to go around towards the poles or flank on trips over several thousand miles long for commercial purposes-

for recreational sailing it would not even matter over thousands of miles unless your purpose was to get from point A to point B as fast as possible, and other factors such as water temp (cold pacific currents N of  LA- Seattle water temp typically only 45* in winter-go numb in 5 minutes at that temp) and storms would be more important

most east coasties and N Europe dont know how lucky they are w the warm Atlantic ocean conveyor belt that goes all the way to Iceland and Norway- thats why a lot more hurricanes in Atlantic above the tropics-

I've read books and seen scientific programs on- not to mention movies- on what would happen if that warm ocean conveyor belt shut down as it has in ages past-causing horrible European winters as late as the 1800's that killed millions-they postulate the Greenland ice sheet melt could cause the conveyor belt to shut down as a method by the planet to keep things within certain norms-so global warming-no matter the cause -could lead to another ice age-hold the hate mail- thats what politically correct scientists say;

what is the earths curvature - thought it was 1 foot for every 7 miles? need to look it up- but that would be only 1000 foot for 7000 miles-no reason to flank-any other thoughts on this out there? so has to be more to it? this spatial reasoning is a weakness of mine

also when I tried to string the points on the globe I got a max N lat of 44* not the 55* N lat the ship went to -if not more