My Feb 26 Caribbean Eclipse experience..........Martin Mobberley ------------------------------------------------------------------ My journey to see the 1998 Total Solar Eclipse started in the early hours of Feb 24th (my Dad's birthday), only 2.5 days before the eclipse itself. Normally I have preferred holidays with the eclipse at the end - a hangover from Hawaii where I just wanted to get home after that disastrous trip. However, this time, due to BAA commitments, I had to choose a holiday with the eclipse at the start. As it turned out, this unwelcome restriction led to fate dealing me all the top cards as I was spoilt with the best travelling companions I could have hoped for. When you travel alone to an eclipse, you only start to know who your fellow travellers are when you board the plane. You hope for companions who are intelligent but who also have a sense of humour and who will offer moral support if things don't go to plan; my new found friends on this trip had all these qualities and more. One thing I did know though, Hazel McGee was on my 'C2' Explorers itinerary, so at least I would have someone intelligent to talk to. As I started my journey from Heathrow I spotted Hazel in the departure lounge and then Nigel & Alex Evans appeared. I had only spoken to Nigel & Alex once before, on a train from Liverpool Street to Colchester in Jan '96, but we were soon sharing our memories of India and Chile.....the cramped & boring plane journey was looking less of a trial already. The Evans' & myself were to become firm friends by the end of the trip; many a hysterical story was related at each evening's dinner table. When choosing my eclipse itinerary I had decided to hop from Curacao to the neighbouring island of Bonaire just after the eclipse for a change of scene; what to do for 5 or 6 days in Bonaire though? In a moment of inspiration or madness (I'm not sure which) I decided last summer to enroll on a PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) Scuba Diving course. As Explorers Tours organise more diving holidays than eclipse holidays I was confident that I would be in safe hands. As I boarded the plane to Amsterdam I already knew that Nigel & Alex were doing the Scuba course too. Later, on the transatlantic flight, I spotted Konrad Malin-Smith's daughter Beverley swotting up on the PADI material ready for the Day 1 Exam. At this stage I could not have guessed that she would become my dive 'buddy' (divers always dive in two's for obvious safety reasons) or, that Beverley, Nigel and myself would be the only ones (on our C2 itinerary) to complete the course in the 5 days. Incidentally, Nigel scored 90% in the exam; I scored 88%. I mention all this simply to enable the reader to see the holiday through my eyes. Seeing the eclipse was only half the challenge of this holiday for me. On the long haul from Amsterdam to Curacao further friendships developed. Loughton A.S. members Bruce Rixen and John Blake were always seated near me, as where the Malin-Smith's and Mike Frost from Rugby. Hazel boarded a sister KLM plane at Amsterdam with a similar take off and landing time. Remarkably, the two 747's rendezvoused in mid-atlantic and approached to within half a mile, both pilot's tipping the planes and swapping positions so passengers could view their colleagues in the other plane! I wonder what air traffic control thought of that stunt! After a 22 hour journey (Cockfield to Curacao is a long haul!) we all arrived, very tired, at the Curacao Casino Resort; even if we stayed here at the south of the island we would be under the Moon's shadow for two minutes.......we were in position! John Mason arrived at the same time from Venezuela (the alternate eclipse site where he would be on eclipse day) and John, Hazel and myself exchanged tired pleasantries before collecting our luggage and room keys and, at long last, getting some sleep! The next day was (relief!) at total leisure in Willemstad (Curacao's capital) with the only item on the agenda being John's entertaining (as always) pre-eclipse talk. As John's talk was about to start, eclipse chaser and Queen guitarist Brian May suddenley materialised at the site; a more friendly and approachable mega-star you could never hope to meet. On this trip he was accompanied by his partner, the actress Anita Dobson. John warned us that he had been a victim of intense Mozzy (mosquito) bites in Bonaire and showed a graph to prove it! During the next two days a number of other amateur astronomers appeared, many from the Liverpool area, including Eric Jones and a number of people working with the 'Discovery Channel'. At leisure in Curacao I went into Willemstad and had rides on a pontoon bridge and a ferry boat with Nigel and Alex. I was now starting to forget the tedium of transatlantic air travel and feel like I was on holiday.....but in the back of my mind I knew that the eclipse was tomorrow (26th) and there was a lot of cloud about! Eclipse day started with a lot of worried faces at the breakfast table.....it was almost totally cloudy in Willemstad and as breakfast ended it started to rain. "Please God, not another Hawaii" I thought. After breakfast we travelled in a convoy of people-carriers/mini-buses to the eclipse site at Knipp Beach on the NW tip of Curacao - an idyllic beach site with an azure sea. Nigel, Alex and Hazel were in my minibus. Our mood soon changed; as soon as we were halfway to the site the cloud started to break with huge chunks of blue appearing. We arrived at Knipp beach with two hours to spare before first contact - what a luxury, and plenty of time for TA video interviews. For the next hour and a half I wandered around the idyllic beach site recording interviews and meeting all the people from the other Caribbean itineraries. Old friends from India & Chile were spotted in droves! I was especially pleased with the quality of the interviews I obtained at the eclipse site; everyone wanted to talk and everyone was articulate. Interviews were recorded with Ken Medway, Alan Dowdell, Bruce Hardie, Konrad Malin-Smith, Brian May, Eric Strach, Nigel Evans, Hazel McGee, Pam Spence and myself. In addition, the eclipse itself was video'd with the camcorder and 5x tele-converter. At the time of first contact the sky was about 70% clear/30% cloudy, a dramatic improvement on the situation earlier in the day. As second contact approached our prayers were answered and the sky became totally cloudless. We WERE going to see it; to coin a pun.....without a shadow of doubt! As usual at total eclipses the illumination of the ground became noticeably weird with sharp shadows developing and crescent patterns appearing under the leafy palm trees. In the last few minutes before totality the sky darkens as if a giant light dimmer is turning the sky brightness down and the crescent starts shrinking perceptibly as you look at it. Through filters it looks like a giant curved door is slowly closing. There was some speculation before the eclipse as to just how easy it would be to see Venus, but in fact it could easily be seen more than a minute before second contact, over the western sea horizon. As far as second contact was concerned, the final entry into totality (i.e. the first 'diamond ring') was incredibly prolonged and far longer than in Chile or India.....just how deep a chasm on the lunar surface caused that? To the usual whoops and cries and quite a lot of ship fog horns, totality finally arrived and Mercury & Jupiter emerged on either side of the Sun. Words and pictures can never describe such a spectacle; you have to be there to experience it - awesome! The structure of the corona was not dissimilar to that in India with one main spike to the East and a sort of long & short pair of Westward streamers. However, there were also a lot of thinner streamers which were not aligned in an E-W direction; a hint that Solar minimum was now over perhaps? Bruce Hardie had hinted that we might have a four horned 'square' corona and the corona certainly had a blocky rectangular look to it, althogh not actually 'four-pronged'. I found the polar brushes a bit disappointing this time. In Chile they had been exquisite and in India they were fine and distinct; this time though, they were relatively blurred (to me at least). Just before mid-totality I put the binoculars down and rattled off a few shots of the inner corona with the Celestron C90 which was mounted on the same tripod as the camcorder. Resuming with the binoculars and one minute from 3rd contact, a very intense pink/purple light appeared at the western side of the eclipsed sun.....so bright that it almost seemed to brighten the corona! At first I thought the eclipse was ending prematurely but it was, in fact, just a bright prominence close to the 3rd contact position. Although this was not the diamond ring, it indicated that the end was not far away. These eclipses are just too short! When the diamond ring arrived after about 3m20s of totality it was a far quicker affair than at 2nd contact. The usual whoops & cries heralded the end of the eclipse, along with a sinking feeling that Cornwall, cloudy or clear, was over 17 months away. A few observers at our site clearly saw the shadow bands just after totality. No-one saw them on the way in though. Most importantly, Eric Strach had a video camera pointing down at a white cardboard sheet throughout totality, just in case shadow bands were visible. If he succeeded in recording them he has a very rare piece of footage indeed! After the elation of the eclipse I continued with the interviews to capture the immediate post-eclipse elation. Unlike in India and Chile though, there was no big, prolonged anti-climax feeling at the site. We were on an idyllic seaside beach with our tedious daytime jobs 5,000 miles away and those of us on itinerary C2 were only just starting our holiday; we were now in a very real holiday mood. Therefore, my first post-eclipse action was to rip the video cassette tabs off and rewind the corona slide film into the canister; eclipse elation can easily make you drop your guard and disasters can easily happen. That evening our C2 group flew to Bonaire, a short 50 mile hop; and the next day some of us were to start our Scuba diving course! As TA is an Astronomy mag I won't bore readers too much with my personal Scuba experience. All I can say is that Nigel, Beverley and myself started the course with extreme doubts and to be frank, stark terror. But we conquered our fears and by the end of the week we were swimming down to 22 meters and were living in an environment that could have belonged to another planet. Some divers spend their lives dreaming of diving off Bonaire; we were lucky enough to combine an eclipse with this experience. As far as the terror is concerned, much of the course was concerned with what you do in the worst cases, e.g. simulating losing your mask (which encloses your nostrils......aargh!) or your regulator (mouthpiece/air supply). Imagine sitting/hovering on the sea bed under 15 metres of salt water, surrounded by big fish and then taking your mask off (nostrils exposed) while continuing to breathe through your mouth; then you 'calmly' reposition your mask, and clear the water out! I can assure the reader that uncontrollable panic was only a hair's breadth away at all times, which made our achievements all the more meaningful to us. I can't ever remember being prouder of any achievement than gaining my PADI certificate (Nigel pointed out that we should all have been certified years ago!) and I would not have believed that by the end of the course (March 3rd) the eclipse itself had been eclipsed by the diving experience. But none of the three of us could have done it without the support and good humour of the others....we shared and conquered our fears together and dreamed of diving together again, maybe at the Great Barrier Reef after a sunset eclipse on Dec 4th 2002, or even off Africa on 21st June 2001. In the meantime my Dad has taken the lid off our septic tank so I can get some practice in. There are many other stories to tell.......the victims of the horrific mozzy bites (despite insect repellant), spotting the 1 day crescent over the sea at Bonaire on Feb 27th etc......Evening after evening of outdoor restaurant meals watching the crescent fatten up with Orion at the zenith! I hope as many eclipse chasers as possible will congregate at the Birmingham BAA mtg on April 25th, when some of these stories can be told and friendships renewed. The nightmare of Hawaii is now long gone as I've had 3 out of 3 successes with Chile, India and Curacao and a good decision to avoid Mongolia. Next stop: Truro School, Cornwall. Martin Mobberley