Endless Summer – without A/C

Originally published June, 2008

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. How about “For every advantage there is an almost equal and opposite disadvantage”?

Don’t get me wrong; I still think that I’d rather be too warm than too cold. But living with constant heat does take some getting used to. Even when we lived in San Diego, we had a winter of a sort – cool enough to need jackets and a furnace in the house. Now that we’re following the sun I have a new perspetive on living in an endless summer. I sort of understand the way of life described in the deep south in the days before electricity but I still can’t imagine what it was like at 90 degrees with 85% humidity wearing the many layers of clothing they wore back then. Heat is debilitating.

Even wearing the scanty summer clothes of modern life, it can get very uncomfortable when there’s work to be done. We do our chores in spurts with rests in between to have a cool drink and let the sweat dry off a bit. There’s not the constant moving from one task to another that we were used to. And it is very easy to postpone those sweat producing tasks until they become big jobs instead of mere tasks.

So am I complaining? Maybe grumbling just a little when I’ve got sweat dripping off my nose; but not really. It’s mostly a matter of adjusting to it. We don’t have air conditioning. If we did have, we’d spend far too much time down below staying cool. We’d miss the passing parade of life and that would be a shame. As I write this, we’ve been in 80+ degree temps for as long as I can remember. We did wear sweatshirts one night while on passage but that was unusual. I think I’ll take my ginger ale out into the cockpit and see what’s going on.