Posted October 25, 2023
about September, 2022
Our first night in Queensland’s Cumberland Islands brought a sign that the season was changing—it was warm enough that we kept our companionway curtain open and turned up our fans.
For the past few years, we’ve made our yearly migration from New Zealand to the tropics late in the fall. Since winter is approaching by the time we arrive, the tropical weather has cooled, making it easy—and very enjoyable—to adjust to those temperatures.
When the time comes to migrate from the tropics back to New Zealand, the temperatures are ramping up, and at times it can get uncomfortably hot. By the time we head south, we’re always looking forward to the cooler (yet warming) late-spring temperatures back in New Zealand.
This year, though, things would be different. We’d not only be remaining in the tropics as summer approached, we’d be heading even further north, making our way to Indonesia. But after spending 2 ½ years in New Zealand due to Covid, we’d grown more accustomed to cool temperatures. Naturally, I was worried about how we’d handle warmer weather. And as it was, I would not call us hot-weather-type people. We start to suffer as the temperatures climb.
Of the many challenges that lay ahead of us, living in a hot climate would be the biggest, and I wasn’t sure we’d be able to overcome this one. Years ago, talking to a friend, I worried about heading to someplace like Indonesia saying, “I just don’t know if we can handle the heat.” He advised us not to limit ourselves by thinking that way. I understood where he was coming from, but seeing Rich suffer a bout of heat exhaustion in Fiji, I knew it’s not always mind over matter. The human body will let you know its limitations, whether you want to have them or not—sometimes matter wins out over mind.
In preparation for Indonesia, I’d campaigned hard for us to get an air conditioner in New Zealand, not to cool off the entire boat but simply to cool the area over our bed during the hottest part of the day. Still, the air conditioner would consume a lot of electricity, so we’d run it only in dire need, certainly not every day. It wouldn’t be much, but I hoped it would enable us to cope.
For the moment, my focus was on helping us physically acclimate to the heat, hoping we could do so by adjusting to the rising Queensland temperatures as we traveled north. We’d have to think differently, though: instead of suffering and thinking, “We’ll be cooler soon,” we needed to think, “OK, this is my life, so how do I make myself comfortable?” It was an intimidating prospect, to say the least.
At this point the daytime temperatures weren’t yet that hot, but the nights were getting warmer than we were used to. Our adjustment would begin with sleeping in warmer air, a good place to start.
Below, Rich collaborated with DALL-E 3 and ChatGPT to create an image of a steamy tropical jungle. Rich sees it as misty cool, but I can see it as hot and steamy. In any case, its beauty shows how one might want to tolerate the heat to see such a beautiful place. –Cyndi
