Saturday November 10
The expedition members started arriving in large numbers. About half arrived on Saturday 10th, half on Sunday.
Sunday November 11
On Sunday November 11, we catered a fantastic bbq come banquet by the pool for
everyone. Many thanks to my friends Andrew and Andrea Wilson, the Shaws,
the Zeilers,
Dave Bassett, Bill Hall, Dan Orange and Andrew Cohen, my cousin
Kristen Wollams and her partner Peter Richardson and especially to my
cousin Anton Pulvirenti for
helping with so much of the food preparation to make this
fantastic night
possible.
I also picked up a rentacar this day. As if the car accident
wasn't going to be expensive enough, to add insult to injury, after
organizing cheap car rental for a hundred or so people, I ended up
having to pay $200 a day for mine.
Monday November 12th - The reef cruise
On Monday morning we left early for the Port Douglas marina. I
was
out at my car with the laptop receiving the first weather report 15
mins before the boat set sail. It was not great news.
"A ridge along the north
Queensland
coastline is directing moist, onshore, E/SE winds over north
Queensland. Expect this to bring some isolated showers today
with
cloudy periods. Unfortunately this ridge will persist into
Wednesday morning and it is likely to bring morning showers along the
coast and over the ranges. But further west, conditions will
be
drier and clearer skies will be more likely."
It was looking like we would be traveling inland and abandoning the Port Douglas Site. At this point our
meteorologist's weather predictions were already pretty well spot on
with this Monday 9am forecast having predicted 60% cloud on the coast,
30% at Mt Carbine, 15% inland and 15% on the west coast of the Cape.
As the boat headed out into the rough water it immediately began
lurching
violently. One engine was not working and so causing the violent
instabilities. Fortunately, I don't get seasick even in rough
weather but
on
this occasion, it was rough enough to even unsettle me slightly.
Some people who took travel calm medication before the
cruise were nonetheless violently ill. Eighty two passengers on
the boat were from my group. I moved around the boat briefing
people from the group about the weather. I could see lots of others not
from our group leaning in trying to listen in on the weather info.
Above left : photo by Bill
Hall. I had just done a deep jack knife dive down to the helmet
dive
platform when I saw my friend Dave Bassett down there. But I
didn't equalize properly and nearly
burst my eardrums. I knew there was a reason why I've never
learned to
scuba dive.
Below : Aaron Brown took these pictures while riding in the semi-submersible sub. |
Above right : Pencil drawing by
Anton Pulvirenti of Kristen Wollams in the wave piercing catermarran. |
Our cruise returned at 5pm on Monday 12th, I drove straight out to the
Port Douglas observing site to brief many of the observing site
subscribers who came out to undertake a site inspection. About 40-50
people were present from the ASV, Sydney Observatory and AAQ. I
updated them on the latest weather predictions.
After the briefing, I did the rounds of numerous hotels in Port Douglas
to deliver site passes. I called through the resort briefly for
dinner then drove into Cairns to deliver more site passes.
Tuesday November 13th
7:00am
The balloon launch and recovery team left for Kimba first thing this
morning. They had radio phone and internet as well as satellite
phone. We were still awaiting the final letter of agreement (LOA) from
Air Services Australia (ASA) the body responsible for air traffic
control.
8:00am
The first weather report was due at midday. I collected the
borrowed telescope from Terry Cuttle and then I spent the morning test
assembling and balancing my mount and trying to align the two telescopes. I helped Bengt to
assemble my other equatorial mount, attach the OTA's and balance the
mount.
Meanwhile, Anton sat back sketching us and produced this fantastic brush and ink drawing.
"Setting up, eclipse" by Anton Pulvienti
10:00am
A number of tour members didn't seem appreciate how good our weather
consultants were and so all morning I had one person after another come
and want to chat about the weather or show me their favourite weather
web site. I saw no value in putting time into weather analysis
having hired experts to do it for us. I kept asking them to be
patient and wait for the consultant reports. No sooner did one leave
than another would turn up at my apartment.
12:00pm
Around lunchtime, the final letter of agreement regarding our balloon
launch with Air Services Australia arrived. I checked it,
signed it and returned it to them. Waited for their confirmation of
receipt and then sent a copy to the launch team.
The weather update also arrived. Weather prospects had improved
marginally across the board with chances of clear sky being 55% on the
coast, 75% at Mt Carbine, 90% at Maitland Downs and 85% at Pormpuraaw
on the Gulf of Carpentaria. I forward the weather update by email to
the full observer consortium.
3:30pm
Bengt Anton and I left for Port Douglas. No sign of police or emergency services along the coast road except at Rex lookout.
4:00pm
ABC 666 2CN Canberra radio booked up an interview with me which I
delivered from the car (using my wireless headset, officer!) as we were
arriving into Port Douglas. We had to erect a 1 x 1.8 metre sign
identifying the observing
site. We also did a whole lot of mundane but nonetheless essential
things like filling the toilet blocks tanks with water, filling the
holders with toilet paper and basins with soap.
I got some funny calls and emails during this eclipse. One of the
funniest occurred not long after the radio interview. I received a call
from the chief pilot of a charter airline. He was the pilot of an
airline I had tried to organize my eclipse flight with before they ran
into financial difficulties and had to reduce the number of planes on
lease and canceled my booking. He had cooked up some scheme with
his remaining planes to send them up at premium pricing to watch the
eclipse from above the cloud ceiling.
They were running tourist flights at 10, 000 feet to view the eclipse
from the air the next morning. He wanted to know if they climbed up to
10000 feet, and the cloud ceiling was 7000 feet, would they be able to
see the sun or would they be looking down at it through the cloud?
I said, "It's fine, the sun is at 15 degrees altitude." He
replied, "Yeah but that's just from the ground, we'll be at 10000 feet
so well be looking down at the sun. Do you think we'll be looking down
through the cloud too?"
I actually had to explain to him that the sun was 150 million km away
and it's altitude didn't change by any noticeable amount with a small
change in height of the aircraft like 10 000 feet. I told Anton
and Bengt about it and we had a good laugh.
5:00pm
I checked my email for the afternoon weather update. There was very
little change. Weather prospects were the same across the board except
for an insignificant 5% worsening at Mt Carbine with chances
of clear sky being 55% on the coast, 70% at Mt Carbine, 90% at Maitland
Downs and 85% at Pormpuraaw on the Gulf of Carpentaria. I forward the
weather update by email to the full observer consortium.
6:00pm
I was supposed to give a briefing at 6pm at the resort but we were
running late. I called ahead and asked one of the experienced
eclipse chasers to give the first time eclipse observers a briefing on
the use of eclipse glasses and eclipse viewing and asked the group to
reconvene at the pool at 7pm.
7:00pm
I arrived from Port Douglas at 6:59pm and went straight from my car to
the pool area to give the latest weather briefing. What a crazy day?
Everybody is assembled and we get straight into it. I explain the
weather situation although by this time most people at the briefing.
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