Eclipse!!!

We woke up at our usual time; we had already entered Exmouth Gulf and in the calm water our ship left a beautiful wake. Dave went to get sunrise pix (he missed by about 3 minutes) and for the first time I made it up to the gym for abs and stretch classes. They’re not very good, but they’re still good, if you get my meaning. Then I headed down to breaky in the dining room, where I sat with two nice Aussie cousins, one of whom had seen one eclipse(Susan)  and one who hadn’t seen any (Sharon). Susan is a former school principal from out near Coonabarabran, and we had an interesting talk about schools. She’s a very articulate, educated woman, but then we started talking about her first eclipse, and when she tried to describe it she was struggling. “It was.. well, I felt…I seemed like…”  I think there are two kinds of people, one like her (and me and Dave) where it’s more than just motions in the sky, and others that think it’s nice.

By 9:30 the ship was anchored in Exmouth Gulf and we were out on deck 11 aft, which they’ve cordoned off for our eclipse group. We’re facing south, so the sun will be over the ship. As Elise said, it’s a place to watch the eclipse, not necessarily the best. After first contact (when the moon’s shadow first touches the sun) I went for a walk around the ship, and it seemed like everybody was up and outside. On our deck they handed out ritz crackers for pinhole viewing, which Dave made sure I got attribution for in one of his conversations. With about 90 minutes between 1^st and 2^nd contact (2^nd contact also known as totality), I decided to go get my computer and see if I could get some blogging done. With everybody out on deck looking up the internet was the fastest I’d ever seen on a ship, and I was able to get some pictures into the 1^st cruise day blog and get the 2^nd cruise day blog written and posted – with pictures, although not very carefully placed. I was racing the moon to get the link to the last blog posted, and it went up about 12 minutes before totality.

That was good timing, because that’s about when things start to get noticeably weird in an eclipse. Through our viewers we could see that the moon had covered most of the sun, leaving a “new sun” crescent peeking out. The color of the light got grayer, and it got noticeably cooler – I’d started the eclipse feeling uncomfortably warm in my lightweight sunshirt, and by this time I’d started to wonder if I should have brought a warmer thing up with me. Mike (of Mike and Judi) had turned Dave on to an app that talks your through the eclipse, telling you how many minutes are left and what to look for, and Kelly was up on the bridge counting off the time and announcing the stages. It all starts happening really fast as the moon completely covers the sun – the sun’s corona becomes visible, the bright spots that are the sun peeking through the mountains on the moon, the growing darkness. Sometimes you can see the moon’s shadow approach; we saw it clearly in Wyoming but not so much here. And then it’s totality, and you can stop using the filter, and there’s a black hole in the sky and the ambient light is lower and there’s sunset all around and everybody is yelling and looking. This eclipse was so short – about a minute – that there was almost no time between the start of totality (2^nd contact) and the moment when the edge of the moon starts to move off the sun (3^rd contact). Way, way too soon Kelly was saying “filters on” and it was over. Then we all had to cheer and look at each other and say too short! Do it again! We were standing next to a first timer and he just had the biggest smile. There’s another eclipse coming up in Australia in 2028 and I think that all the Aussies on the boat are ready!

We weren’t sure when we were going to be underway, so we walked up to 7 forward looking to see if we could see the anchor. We found a place where there was a hole in the floor and big links of chain going down into it, and over on the other side a similar rig with what might have been the top of an anchor visible, so we thought that might be it. By then it was lunchtime already! We ended up in the Waterfront and moments after I realized the menu is always the same there and we’d tried everything on it that we wanted to try, the waiter arrived with a brand new menu. I had the seafood stew, which was seafood in a nice white sauce covered with mashed potatoes and it was very tasty. Dave finished what I couldn’t eat. During lunch the internet was swamped and we couldn’t get on. We’d gotten a table for just the two of us by the window with the sun visible, and I took the opportunity a couple of times to watch the rest of the eclipse – I think I just missed 4^th contact, when the sun completely comes out from the shadow of the moon.

After lunch we went back to the cabin and spent a while just looking over the back of the ship, enjoying the quiet and the way the sun shone off of the water. It's usually pretty noisy out here and of course the engines churn up the water a lot, so it was an unusual sight - normally the only time you'd see the back of the ship so calm is when you're docked. Dave showered and got off all the sunscreen (I showered before lunch) and while he was showering I did the wordle (in 2!) and some duolingo and started to fall asleep. Dave went to have a beer on deck and I took a nap. I woke up when I felt the engines start to shake the couch and went onto the balcony to see if we were moving. We weren’t, but I could hear the captain’s announcement that we were about to raise the anchor. I slipped on my shoes and headed to 7-forward, moving faster and faster until I was running pretty fast. As I got close I could hear an incredible amount of noise, and when I got to the screen that closes off the front of the deck I could see the chains moving. There was a good sized crowd but there are advantages to being short, so I got to where I could see pretty well. The chain stopped moving after a while so most people figured it was done. I went up to get a closer look and happened to be standing right in front when it started up again, and I stayed there until the anchor came up into the hole and looked just like the spare. I didn’t take any pictures or video because the noise was just too loud to take my hands away from my ears.

By then it was about 2:30, so I headed to the Marquee theater to get seats for the 3:00 talk on aboriginal astronomy. I messaged my location to Dave and he joined me not long after. The talk was very interesting, especially the part that connected aboriginal stories to actual events (a super nova, a meteor striking the earth, a volcanic eruption) in a way that you could date the story back thousands or even 30,000 years. The speaker was again very engaging.

Rush rush rush from there to dance class, which was right next door. I don’t think I mentioned the Gatsby night, where everyone dressed in flapper-era clothing and you could make a Gatsby headband earlier in the day (for a small fee, of course). Tonight is Bianco night, where everyone is supposed to where white. These two nights happen on all P&O cruises, and it’s how you tell repeat cruisers from newbies, since there’s nothing in any of the pre-cruise information that talks about it. Anyway, tonight everyone is supposed to wear white, and the dance class was to learn the steps to the Bianco dance. It was taught by one of the cast members, a very enthusiastic and energetic young man who did a great job of getting us through the choreography. My ability to remember choreo has improved over the years – I could remember all 4 of the step sequences! It was a good time.

After class I went back to our cabin to do more writing and posting and Pilates homework, and I finally remembered a trick to post both my pictures and Dave’s without downloading them first, which is to make them into a google photos album. I know you don’t care about that, but I’m hoping writing it down here will stick it in my memory for next time I’m blogging in a place with spotty internet! 

Dave had an enjoyable time on deck, then came down to get me and we went to watch the sunset. There was a green flash that lasted an unusually long time; one person on deck was shouting “Green ray! Green ray! Two amazing solar events in one day!”. We stayed out while it got dark and Dave tried unsuccessfully to find Mercury –we used our hands to measure astronomical distances like we learned in the lecture, but it didn’t help. Meanwhile, the sky did something I don’t ever think I’ve seen before. A large section of it right above where the sun had set turned rose pink. It lasted a really long time, and below it the low orange-y clouds on the horizon formed a semi-circle under it, as if they were a cradle for it. I took a lot of pictures of it, but none of them really show how lovely and strange it was.

We had dinner with Stuart from our land tour and Darren and Peter from Pennsylvania; Darren was totally self-centered and should have been annoying but for some reason I got a kick out of him. The food continued to be surprisingly good and it was a two-dessert night; tiramisu and sticky date pudding, because who can choose? There wasn’t any observing since the ship has turned around so the back deck faces North, which nobody cares about. There was the Bianco party, and so I went and danced for 45 minutes or so; the cast came out and danced a number and then did the dance we’d learned in the afternoon so we could join in, and then two other line dances that were easy enough to figure out, and also Danza Kuduro which we learned on the Panama Canal cruise. That was enough, so I headed back to the cabin for a quick shower (Dave was already in bed) and bedtime. 

 This picture of a mustard station is for Ben.