by Rob Hawley
I went inside until the rain stopped and then moved the rest of the equipment out to wait sunrise at 4:30. The sky was overcast - this is not good. We were still north of the eclipse site so perhaps all would be right. We reached the proposed site at 6:00. It looked better down the eclipse path toward the deep ocean so we turned SE and headed down the eclipse track. At first we just poked along, but as the beginning of the eclipse appeared the ship began moving faster and faster hoping to reach " the light area ahead". The moon moved over the sun starting at about 7:30. We could see the show on and off through breaks in the clouds. It is now approaching the time of totality (8:19). Panic is starting to set in. One large cloud remains until "the clear area". Too late. The moon has finally caught up with the sun. The last glimpses of the bright sun are going with the show elusively behind the clouds.
But wait!!! We can see the corona through a thin area in the clouds. Now we can see the bright inner atmosphere of the sun. The morning is saved. In fact, some of the details of the eclipse that are normally hidden are visible due to the filtering properties of the clouds.
We are in total darkness now, but all around the ship we can see the cloud reflections of twilight on the clouds and daylight on the sea some 10 miles away.
I bet you are wondering about pictures. Well at this point the ship is barreling through the water at close to 20 knots and bucking like a cheap bar bull ride. I did not even try to set up the scope. I did take a QuickTime movie that proves I saw the corona and shows the twilight effects on the clouds. Unfortunately it is not very high quality. Other folks brought scopes to view the eclipse, but also punted due to the ship motion. Some of my friends got decent hand held video. There was one guy that got a decent still picture. Expect to see that in S&T in April or so.
I did hear the other ship got clouded out as did the folks in South Africa.