Holy Humid Hotness - Lingga Island, Indonesia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Fri 29 Oct 2010 02:51
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00:18.709S 104:59.231E
This is no ordinary hotness. This is take your breath
away, clothes shedding, sweat seeping, sleeping in the cockpit on a towel, feet
burning on the deck, air thicker than the smog hanging over LA, too hot for
hugging, hotness. It is Holy Hotness - with capital H's. Even
better; Holy Humid Hotness. No wonder people living in the islands don't
always seem to have a lot of energy. Holy Humid Hotness is an energy
sucking black hole. Making lunch becomes an effort (cold cheese
and crackers). Life ceases to revolve around the sun, and instead
revolves around the shade spots - of which there are few on a boat. We
wish for clouds and don bathing suits (if a boat is close enough to see us -
otherwise we don't bother) and run around the deck when a rain squall blows
through to get cool (as long as it isn't accompanied by scary fork
lightening - then we run around stowing the computers in the oven and hunker
down). We watch the thermometer in the main cabin and rejoice if it
doesn't hit 90 by 9 in the morning. "Aha! It's cooler
today!" we might crow as the thermometer hovers around 89. "And we
have a nice breeze!" we say as we bask in the tiny waft of air
the motion of the boat creates as it motors at 6
knots through flat water undisturbed by wind. That's when we are
feeling positive about the Holy Humid Hotness. When we're feeling
negative, there is no crowing - only, "Holy shit, it's hot!" or the more
morose, "I think I'm going to die."
As you might have guessed, we reached another record high
temperature during the 1 1/2 day, 210 mile motorsail from Belitung to
Lingga Island on October 14-15. 95.9F this time. Enough to drive a
less civilized couple insane. Here we are living to tell about it though,
so it couldn't have been that bad. Besides, we were only 20
miles south of the equator at that point, so really, who can complain
about the heat?
The good news is that the anchorage at Lingga Island was
really nice - clear, blue, calm water between Lingga and a smaller island,
and only a few putt-putt fishing boats puttering past on their way out to
sea. No nearby town, no canoes full of kids, and only four boats -
Harmonie, Priscilla, Storyteller and a new-to-us sailboat from Austria, called
Anima.
 Sunrise on the morning of the second day on the way to
Lingga. That's Priscilla in the distance next to a tiny island. Our
motorsail through the night was blissfully quiet. Some freighters, a few
tugs and barges, squid boats and other fishing boats, but no flotillas. It
was our last overnighter of the season, and will probably be the last
overnighter we do for quite some time. No one on Harmonie is shedding
tears over this fact.
Next up: equator crossing. Or, more accurately,
re-crossing.
Anne
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