Our Adventure
To Fécamp, France and the
Total Solar Eclipse of August 11th. 1999
Part II

Soon enough, though, a guy with a bullhorn announced the French equivalent of "first contact." Everyone out there stopped and looked up. It didn’t look good although out over the channel it was crystal clear. We were all getting somewhat depressed by the clouds. There wasn’t even a hazy bit of sun on which to focus any telescope or camera. I wandered around for a while looking at the various instruments that people had set up in order to record the event. In the process, the press interviewed me a couple more times. A TV crew (not the same one with the acting troop) interviewed Robert and his daughter, Mary. As I was walking back to our campsite, another crew of photojournalists had organized a group of people for a photo wearing the "eclipse shades" that are necessary for the partial phases of the eclipse. Just as an afterthought, I turned to the photographer and pointed at my shirt and yelled "Eclipse, eclipse!" My shirt has one of my photos from the 1998 eclipse in Aruba. Someone yelled out "Sky and Telescope!" and before I knew what had happened, I was donned with a pair of eclipse shades and photographed with the shirt and my camera in prominent view. Afterward, a journalist with the photographer came over to interview "the guy from Sky & Telescope" and I had to inform him that I wasn’t with the magazine. He was quite disappointed.

All of this dancing and dodging was going on because it was still cloudy and no sun was visible….. eclipsed or not. Everyone was extremely on edge because of the chance that no one would see the eclipse. By now, though, it was show time. If it didn’t clear now we would miss the whole thing. Out to the east, where the shadow would come from, it was clear and this clear sky area was coming our way. The crowd began to stir with anticipation. People began to run for their cameras and stuff. The eclipse shades began to come off. We could now see the last sliver of the sun's photosphere through the clouds. The shadow of the moon was rushing up to cover us and you could see it coming! I was running up to my cameras and stuff to grab a few disparate pictures. I had had a written plan to do a series of shots in a particular order, but that was all abandoned now. A thin haze was over the diamond ring. A swelling yell came up from the crowd. TOTALITY! (Through the receding haze)!!!! We had another total eclipse.

That last minute was what Kathleen had come for. The change of emotion, the excitement, the tears, the breaking out of the champagne, the awe, all of these things came forward from a morning that had started with doom and gloom. But after all, Kathleen is a people watcher. I guess that it comes from 20 years of teaching school for a living. Because of the circumstances, Kathleen considers this eclipse to be our best, even better than the ’91 in Mexico. I like them all.

A little over 2 minutes is all that we had, and then it was over. As I said, the champagne came out and a big sense of relief came over everyone. One of Robert’s friends broke out a bottle of the "Eclipse Fécamp '99 Cidre de Normandie" and we all had a cup. I continued to shoot shots of the partial phases because I had plenty of film and I had no shots of the partial phases preceding the eclipse.

As with any adventure, though, it soon would be over. We still had to eat lunch and pack all of the stuff in Robert’s car. Some British friends that Robert had introduced us to in Bordeaux were not far away and Robert thought it would be best to head in that direction to avoid the massive traffic jam that would soon swamp the little roads. It was also near the train station that we would need to get to go back to Paris. It was a good gamble because the only traffic that slowed us down was quite close to Fécamp. When we got to the farmhouse where the British friends were, we found out that they had been clouded out. They were most disappointed. Kathleen was able to wash up and other members of our party took showers. We sat around for the rest of the afternoon reviewing Elodie’s videotape and studying Robert’s digital shots.

Robert got us to the train station with plenty of time to spare and even inquired to see if there was a train that would get us to Paris any earlier. He knew we had to be on a plane back to the States the next morning at 10:00 AM. We all said our good-byes and were sad that our time with each other’s families was over. But we invited Robert and his family to the USA to visit us so that we can at least return his gracious hospitality.

I would like to thank Robert Soubie and his family and friends for making our eclipse experience AND our stay in France so memoriable. Without his help we would probably have missed the eclipse.

I would also like to thank Steve Schwarz and Agfa for the film that I used to record these images. It's great film, Steve!