Dialogue: Age shall not weary them, nor cold deter

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

A friend of mine who swims regularly at Kohimarama - often at the same time as I do, close to high tide - had his last splash of the season on his birthday, June 11, then packed it in, as he always does, until about September. I used to ask him why he stopped in June when the water was about as cold as it gets.

But he's always shrugged it off and when you consider he was 87 when we took to the water on Monday and has never been in hospital, you have to concede that he probably knows what is best for him.

I mention this because one or two of us who have enjoyed nature's great natatorium, the Waitemata Harbour, year-round for two decades or more have been mumbling lately that if the globe is warming you could have fooled us.

So when I read in the Herald on Wednesday that the seas around New Zealand are 1.2 deg warmer than normal for this time of year, I pursed my blue lips and decided I should share my empirical evidence with the quoted expert, Georgina Griffiths, climate scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in Auckland.

I was still a bit androgynous from the shrinking effect of cold water on the body parts when I called. Georgie, it turns out, is brisk and businesslike, bordering on the glib and is a theoretical rather than an empirical scientist.

She had said in the Herald that "there were no cold southerlies bringing up big blobs of cold water from the south in the first part of May." I agreed that it was warm last month, unseasonably warm, but what about now?

She explained that the seasonal cycle suggested the water was at its coldest in late July-early August, but grudgingly conceded the air temperature had dropped sharply in the past week or so.

She could not tell me what the water temperature was this week but said it had been running at 15 deg in the Tasman off the west coast of the isthmus and she would have expected it to be even warmer in the harbour.

Well, we reckoned we'd swum through some pretty big blobs of seriously cold water in the previous week or three, but Georgie's a bit of a psychologist, too, suggesting our memory could be distorted by recent experience of very, very warm seasonal cycles over the past two years and warm water in May.

June, she claimed, was probably no worse than back to "normal." Our memory of colder years before that would have been blotted out by the caress more recently of warmer water.

But the air temperature had been so cold as well, I said. She said water was always much warmer than air temperature. So, I said calmly, if I put my togs on and walked very slowly along Tamaki Drive for 15 minutes, would I - apart from possibly frightening the horses - get even colder than I would in the water.

"Of course not, "said Georgie with a hint of impatience, "the body loses heat in a different way. It's conducted away in the water. When you're wet you lose body heat quicker."

I am well versed in the polemical technique that involves finding another expert if the first one doesn't give you an acceptable answer; so in pursuit of confirmation of lower than "normal" water temperatures I called the environmental services department at the Auckland Regional Council, an experience I shall treat myself to again soon.

You know how most phone systems serve mind-numbing musak while you wait? Well, environmental services broadcasts what sounds like the death throes of gulls caught on the baited hooks of long-lines, accompanied by that agony of no terns being left unstoned. Very dramatic maritime noises.

Anyway, Ross Winterburn proves to be more accurate because he gives me the sort of information I want to hear. The harbour temperature over by Chelsea (the nearest reading he had to Kohimarama) dropped to 11.2 deg during the previous 24 hours and had not been higher than 12.2 over the past few weeks.

Now that is low. In my experience over many years, and according to the lore of the beach, it seldom drops below 13 deg.

So next day I sat, smugly vindicated, in the sun out of the chilling breeze, readying myself for the water, watching all the happy old people bustling along Tamaki Drive, walking to keep their bodies tuned.

I chuckled at the thought of David Hills' recent complaint about oldies being bitter and twisted. I suppose getting rained on every five minutes in his Taranaki bailiwick does turn the mind inwards.

Then Betty, a tiny American New Zealander, showed up in her wetsuit and as she slid into the water I thought of the time two years ago when I was chatting to her about my recent visit to the Big Apple. She wistfully recalled her first visit to the New York.

"I was just a kid," she said as she pulled on her bathing cap, "but I remember it well. I was taken there from up-state for this huge ticker-tape welcome and parade."

"Who for?"

"Lindbergh," she said with a grin.

I believe she recently turned 90.