The same month is not the same month

Climate. The large figure is the mean air temperature; below it, the sea temperature, the month's rainfall and the mean wind. These are thirty-year normals (1991-2020): they say what October is usually like, not what the next one will be. Air, rain and wind come from the ERA5 reanalysis, which works in cells of about 28 kilometres, and at a beach house that cell falls on water or straddles the shore: the air comes out milder than inland —at Playa Blanca, 22.0 °C on average in August against 25.5 at the airport— and the rain a little below a land station's. The sea temperature comes from a different source, because the reanalysis leaves it blank right on the coast.

Light. Hours of daylight and sunrise/sunset times, measured on the 15th of each month in each house's local time. Look at Zanzibar: nearly twelve hours all year round, because it sits six degrees off the equator. And at Lanzarote, going from ten and a half hours in December to fourteen in June.

The moon. Local date and time of the full moon. It is the same moon over all three houses, and not always on the same day: six time zones are enough to shift the date. It matters in two places — in Hoi An the town turns off its electric lights and brings out the lanterns, and in Paje the spring tides are the full-moon and new-moon ones.

Tide. Mean range for the month and the largest of the month, which is the spring tide. In Paje the gap between high and low water uncovers the reef and changes what you can do that morning. There is a table for Zanzibar only: our prediction is calibrated against the tide gauge there, and Lanzarote and Hoi An would need calibrating against theirs. We say so rather than estimate it.