April 8, 2023
Well, physically we’re here, but legally, not so much yet. The check in procedure has been long and very difficult, made even more difficult by the weather. So far we’ve been cleared in by two groups of officials, with two more sets to go. We’ll go into extreme detail on the process in a later post – when enough time has passed that we don’t devolve into screaming or crying messes.
But here’s some good news now: we’re finally in the right place at the right time – for a solar eclipse. Here’s the track of the eclipse with where we are now, where we might be on the 20th of April for the eclipse, and where we might try to go to maximize the effect.
That possible spot directly on the path is in the middle of the ocean, about 150 miles from here. Might be worth an overnight passage, maybe?!?
There’s a great video about the eclipse here.
And here’s a website that shows the path of the eclipse as well as an animation of what it might look like at different points along the path.
Apparently, there’s a tiny town in Australia where they expect thousands of people to turn up. The town is setting up camping grounds. I wonder if they’ve checked the weather?
The little town in question is Exmouth, just southwest of where the cyclone is at the time of the forecast above. It’d have another few days to reach them before the eclipse!
Speaking of the potential cyclone, we arrived at Saumlaki at the exact time the low pressure was forming. This start-of-a-cyclone was the weather I mentioned that is making the check-in process so frigging hard!
-Rich
