Sunday 11 July Total solar eclipse

More by luck than careful planning we are in the right place to view the total eclipse of the sun which happened at 8.13am. We were a few miles too far south of see a 100% eclipse but 94% was plenty good enough. It was exciting as the first part of the moon passed in front of the sun at 7.30am. We watched through 4 layers of sunglass lens out of our cycle sunglasses, a pin whole camera and using the binoculars to project an image onto a piece of paper. The lens were infinity the best as the boat moves around too much to hold the binoculars in line with the suns rays. As we got to the maximum eclipse it definitely got darker, not completely dark, more like the approach of twilight and a little cooler then as the sun re-emerged brightness and warmth returned. There were thin clouds obscured our view from time to time but not too serious.

As the eclipse was happening there was also a football game being shown on TV in the yacht club. The world cup final in S Africa but as neither of us is interested in football we tidied the sail locker instead.

In the evening the yacht club hosted a diy BBQ, bring your own food & plates, buy a beer at the bar. The yacht club isn't as grand as it reads. In February the island was struck by a typhoon that destroyed much of the structure and wiped out the bungalows on the shore. The young American couple who have the lease are gradually trying to rebuild the business and their buildings, including the kitchen. We shared a table with three boats we've seen over the last few weeks; Finnish Tom and Estonian Salme from Ever After, Germans Sven & Katrin from Solar Planet and American Rod, German Liz from Proximity. A fun night was had by all.