What island was Gilligan stranded on?

Answer 1

Location of the island
In episode 3.28, titled "The Pigeon", the note the castaways pin on pigeon's leg says the island is located approximately 300 miles southeast of Hawaii. This general location is referred to in various episodes.
In episode 1.18, entitled "X Marks the Spot", viewers were informed that the Pentagon had decided to test a new warhead just above the equator at 140 degrees latitude and 10 degrees longitude. This is actually one of the series' bigger goofs, as latitude is measured north and south of the equator to the poles and only ranges from 0 to 90 degrees. If coordinates were simply reversed — 140 degrees longitude and 10 degrees north latitude, this would place the island approximately 1200 miles southeast of Hawaii.
A common question is how the castaways, presumably the Professor in particular, were able to determine their location, given that the island itself was supposedly not on any of the Skipper's nautical charts. It is a simple thing to determine one's latitude simply by measuring the angle of the North Star, Polaris, above the horizon at night. Determining longitude is considerably more difficult. They would need to measure the difference between the time of "noon" at their location, and "noon" of some known position, presumably Honolulu. However, if they are indeed only 300 miles to the southeast of Hawaii, the time difference between their "noon" and Honolulu's "noon" would only be about 12 minutes. Such a small differential would be extremely difficult to measure by observation alone, but not necessarily impossible.

[edit]
A more realistic location of the island
Perhaps a more interesting question is to ask "where could Gilligan's Island actually be" ? (What follows is an exercise in logic, and it should be noted that the conclusions are completely contrary to assumptions in the show itself. It is merely presented as "food for afterthought".)

The initial location, 300 miles from Hawaii, is based on the premise that they awoke the next morning shipwrecked on the island. Assuming they left in the afternoon and awoke mid-morning that would be about 20 hours time elapsed. At a cruising speed of 15 knots, they would end up about 300 miles from home. However..........

Given :

They set out from Honolulu for a 3 hour tour, and that the weather was good where and when they left. Honolulu is on the Southwest corner of the island of Oahu. They would therefore most likely be cruising on the southwest side of Oahu.
It should be safe to assume that the cruise would plan to stay within sight of shore at all times. A 3-hour tour would take them perhaps 15-20 miles out of the harbor, and then back. This assumes a cruising speed of approximately 10-15 knots, which is a reasonable pleasure cruising rate. This is not enough time to leave the waters around Oahu and get to, or near, any other island. Since there is nothing to see away from shore, they must have planned to view Honolulu from the ocean.
The storm must have approached from the southwest. Tropical depressions, storms, and hurricanes (called typhoons in the Pacific) are cyclonic storms. That is to say that they spin around a central area (eye). The rotation in the northern hemisphere is counter-clockwise. If the storm approached from any other direction, it would have already been stormy on Oahu before they left.
Tropical storms generally travel from southeast towards the northwest. They generally move at about 5-10 knots While cyclonic storms have been known to deviate from this generality for short periods of time, it is virtually unheard of for one to actually travel 300 miles in the opposite direction of normal travel. To cover that distance would require close to two full days.
Using these assumptions, they would have likely been drawn into the storm at about the Two O'clock position in the cyclonic storm. Since the winds of the storm would be moving counter-clockwise, the boat would likely be swept toward the Twelve O'clock position within the storm, and the storm itself also moving in the same general direction. Even after 20 hours they would be swept in a westerly direction, perhaps even a northerly tack. This would suggest that the island they were eventually shipwrecked on would be Northwest of Oahu, not Southeast.

What lies to the Northwest of Oahu is simply more of the charted Hawaiian islands. It is possible that they were actually shipwrecked on a charted island, but that they were simply unaware of their own location. This would go far to explain the vast number of visitors to their island, especially all the "natives" that lived on nearby islands.

[edit]
Southeast of Hawaii ?
The only seemingly feasible way to end up southeast of Hawaii would be if the Minnow had sailed around Diamond Head and on to the east side of Oahu before hitting the storm. They could then enter the storm at the 7-8 O'clock position and the rotation of the storm would carry them to the southeast. There are two major problems with this scenario however. First, the storm itself would have to move "backwards", that is from the northwest towards the southeast. This is extremely unlikely. Second, it would require that they actually travel 50 or more miles before reaching the storm. This would mean cruising at over 25 knots, hardly a sightseeing rate of speed.

Answer 2

Gilligan's Island

Answer 3

Gilligan's Island

Answer 4

Gilligan was stranded on an uncharted desert island. How could the island have a name when it hadn't even be "discovered" and thus named? To put it a different way...if I live on a dirt road that is not on a map and tell my postman I live on Gilligan Street he would look for Gilligan Street only to find.....it doesn't exist in his map/database etc. see how that works? Kind of makes you think though....if Joe Smith isn't in any sort of Social Security, Drivers License or Vital Records (birth certificates, marriage, death etc) databases...does he really exist?

Answer 5

Gilligans Island!!!

Answer 6

Gilligan's Isle

Answer 7

Um...Gilligan's Island?

Answer 8

The Gilligan castaways are the ancestors of "The Others" in LOST...it's the same island.

Answer 9

What Island

Answer 10

gilligans island