Tennessee Slim
Contributor
Two weeks ago I was wondering if this place ever really cooled off. We were almost two months into rainy season and dinner outdoors still could be uncomfortably warm at 10 p.m. Or we’d have massive rain showers and the temperature wouldn’t budge one degree. Pardon my french but 90°F and heavy rain blows chunks.
But about the first of December the stubborn heat finally began to yield. We had a rain shower during a dive, for instance, during which the dive boat captain said the temperature had got down to 75°. I called him on it because the lowest temp I’d seen here before then -- day or night -- was 80°F. But since then I’ve seen a number or rain showers when my truck’s thermometer had got down to 75°. Now the days are pleasantly warm (so long as you can stay out of the sun, if there is any) and the nights are just about perfect.
When I opened the bedroom door this morning, I felt …nothing. For the first time since I moved here, the troll who sits in the hallway outside my bedroom (the only room in the house with a/c), and whose job it is to slap me in the face with the hot, wet blanket each morning was, mysteriously, not at his post. I’m given to understand he’s gone on holiday to the Sudetenland and won’t be back until February. Good riddance, I say.
Summer in Curacao is hot. Really hot. I’d spent the last 31 months before moving here working as a civilian contractor in Iraq so I’m not entirely unacquainted with heat. And Curacao has some serious heat.
The high temp here on summer days is amazingly consistent, always within a degree or two of 98°F. That might not compare to Baghdad’s 125° temps but Baghdad doesn’t have 80% relative humidity to go with it. So every -- every -- summer day on Curacao (and a month either side), the heat index is 130 …except when it’s hotter.
Regardless of how you’re diving, by the time you get to the water, you’re praying for relief from the heat. The 84° water is a welcome cool and, for long as you’re above 40 feet, you’re still getting some warmth from the sun. And when you climb back on the boat in cloudless 90° sunshine, your core temp is restored to normal in just minutes.
I moved to Curacao this past summer so this is my first experience with living through the change of seasons here. I’d bought a 2mm shorty before leaving BNAshville and for a while, that was all the wetsuit I had. More to the point, it was all the wetsuit I needed …until the first weekend in December.
I made a morning 2-tank boat dive that weekend with Sunset Divers. During the first dive, a passing cumulus relieved itself around the dive boat so fiercely that, still underwater, I mistook the drumming of the raindrops for the sound of a boat’s motor. After a damp and chilly surface interval and yet another dive, I had to hide out in the boat’s forecastle to stave off uncontrollable shivering.
I’d started the day intending to dive that afternoon as well but I scrapped that plan in favor of driving back to Willemstad to buy a 3mm full wetsuit. I knew that if Sunday’s weather was more of the same, my 2mm shorty wasn’t going to cut it. And my best chance of salvaging Sunday’s diving was to buy a more protective exposure suit. Which I did.
I got a bit of a surprise that night when I downloaded dive data to my laptop. The low temp was 82.4, more than half a degree F warmer than I’d seen on Bonaire the weekend before. I’d made 14 dives in three days there and the shorty had been enough …but barely. Reading those temps, it occurred to me that it wasn’t low water temps that had got to me, it was the cool, cloudy and wet surface interval that had done it.
The truth is the full 3 millie is too warm for at least half of a 1-hour dive …even on Superior Producer, at night and under 90 feet of water. But if it’s raining during the surface interval (which it often is of late), that’s a more reliable proposition than fishing a towel out of your dry bag, drying off, slipping into a warm sweatshirt and pulling on a rain jacket.
But the best news is that now you can stuff your face at an outdoor table at the Ribs Factory and not suffer a heat stroke before you finish your full slab.
At least until that little so-and-so in the pointy hat gets back from the Sudetenland.
But about the first of December the stubborn heat finally began to yield. We had a rain shower during a dive, for instance, during which the dive boat captain said the temperature had got down to 75°. I called him on it because the lowest temp I’d seen here before then -- day or night -- was 80°F. But since then I’ve seen a number or rain showers when my truck’s thermometer had got down to 75°. Now the days are pleasantly warm (so long as you can stay out of the sun, if there is any) and the nights are just about perfect.
When I opened the bedroom door this morning, I felt …nothing. For the first time since I moved here, the troll who sits in the hallway outside my bedroom (the only room in the house with a/c), and whose job it is to slap me in the face with the hot, wet blanket each morning was, mysteriously, not at his post. I’m given to understand he’s gone on holiday to the Sudetenland and won’t be back until February. Good riddance, I say.
Summer in Curacao is hot. Really hot. I’d spent the last 31 months before moving here working as a civilian contractor in Iraq so I’m not entirely unacquainted with heat. And Curacao has some serious heat.
The high temp here on summer days is amazingly consistent, always within a degree or two of 98°F. That might not compare to Baghdad’s 125° temps but Baghdad doesn’t have 80% relative humidity to go with it. So every -- every -- summer day on Curacao (and a month either side), the heat index is 130 …except when it’s hotter.
Regardless of how you’re diving, by the time you get to the water, you’re praying for relief from the heat. The 84° water is a welcome cool and, for long as you’re above 40 feet, you’re still getting some warmth from the sun. And when you climb back on the boat in cloudless 90° sunshine, your core temp is restored to normal in just minutes.
I moved to Curacao this past summer so this is my first experience with living through the change of seasons here. I’d bought a 2mm shorty before leaving BNAshville and for a while, that was all the wetsuit I had. More to the point, it was all the wetsuit I needed …until the first weekend in December.
I made a morning 2-tank boat dive that weekend with Sunset Divers. During the first dive, a passing cumulus relieved itself around the dive boat so fiercely that, still underwater, I mistook the drumming of the raindrops for the sound of a boat’s motor. After a damp and chilly surface interval and yet another dive, I had to hide out in the boat’s forecastle to stave off uncontrollable shivering.
I’d started the day intending to dive that afternoon as well but I scrapped that plan in favor of driving back to Willemstad to buy a 3mm full wetsuit. I knew that if Sunday’s weather was more of the same, my 2mm shorty wasn’t going to cut it. And my best chance of salvaging Sunday’s diving was to buy a more protective exposure suit. Which I did.
I got a bit of a surprise that night when I downloaded dive data to my laptop. The low temp was 82.4, more than half a degree F warmer than I’d seen on Bonaire the weekend before. I’d made 14 dives in three days there and the shorty had been enough …but barely. Reading those temps, it occurred to me that it wasn’t low water temps that had got to me, it was the cool, cloudy and wet surface interval that had done it.
The truth is the full 3 millie is too warm for at least half of a 1-hour dive …even on Superior Producer, at night and under 90 feet of water. But if it’s raining during the surface interval (which it often is of late), that’s a more reliable proposition than fishing a towel out of your dry bag, drying off, slipping into a warm sweatshirt and pulling on a rain jacket.
But the best news is that now you can stuff your face at an outdoor table at the Ribs Factory and not suffer a heat stroke before you finish your full slab.
At least until that little so-and-so in the pointy hat gets back from the Sudetenland.
