My second total solar eclipse. Very different from the fist one, and yet spectacular in its own way. On board Holland America’s Koningsdam ship, off the coast of Mazatlan, with my friend June who was game to say yes when I noticed this cruise and suggested it…..we started in San Diego, visited Cabo San Lucas yesterday, eclipse today, Mazatlan tomorrow, then Hawaii and finally British Columbia.
We woke up early and decided to skip the 9:30 eclipse lecture in favor of getting good seats. Seems lots of people had the same good idea so we didn’t get seats where we’d planned. Instead had breakfast then I went exploring and found a spot. Went to the 10th floor, up a flight of stairs, down a flight of stairs to the port side shuffleboard court where there were 6 lounge chairs of which 3 were available. Figured we would probably be ok when they rotated the ship to have the stern facing the sun and if not we could pop back to the 11th floor. Indeed we were more than ok, we had a relatively private viewing with a dozen or so other people, a quite impressive feat on a ship that carries up to 2700 passengers.
We had 6 sets of plastic eclipse glasses….plus the paper ones the ship provided (mine is now a souvenir)….so we shared with others. Someone later thanked me because mine fit over her vision glasses and worked well for her. We had lounge chairs, towels, sunscreen, lenses to use over our phone lenses, and we were set.
Took and posted my first picture shortly after the moon started blocking the sun. Every few minutes I looked up at the sun through my glasses, then if it seemed sufficiently different from the last time I took another picture, using one of my (extra) sunglass lenses as a filter.
About 20 minutes into the eclipse, or halfway between the start and totality, we noticed it was cooler and it no longer felt too hot to be sitting in the sun (I know, first world problems). The light seemed to have a mild greenish twinge, though seemed about as bright as normal. Didn’t notice any change tot he smell of the air. We hadn’t seen any birds or whales at all today, so can’t speak to how their behavior changed with the eclipse.
Five minutes before totality the light was clearly dimmer, and perhaps a wee bit orange-ish. It was definitely cooler. The ocean was quite flat, though that probably wasn’t a change.
There was a small cheer as totality arrived. Off with the glasses and time to bask in the sun’s glow. The corona was stunningly gorgeous. After I spent a moment looking at it with my eyes and taking pictures, I looked around. As promised, there was twilight all around. There was a bit of a breeze, much more than there had been before totality. Would that I could have looked at the corona for much longer than the four or so minutes of totality (minus the time I looked at other things). I had the good fortune of taking a picture the moment the sun reappeared.
Both June and I looked at shadows throughout the event but didn’t see any noteworthy changes. She wisely took a picture of a table not casting a shadow during totality. She also reminded me to take a selfie with the corona.
It took about 20 minutes following totality for the sun to feel “warm” again as there was about 1/4 of the sun visible again (through eclipse glasses, of course). By then I posted my first (unedited) picture of totality, and the color of the light seemed typical.
I don’t know how far I would travel again for an eclipse, but I’m fortunate to have seen two total solar eclipses.
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