My parents were given to cruising in their retirement, and my father had already reserved a room aboard the Independence, totally oblivious to the fact that a total solar eclipse would occur during the cruise. My mother, more aware of my interest in astronomy than my father, argued him into inviting me along. I already owned a small spotting scope, and while the tripod was checked as baggage, the scope in its case was one of my two carry-ons.

Air travel was still fun in 1991, particularly if you traveled first-class (my father paid for my airfare with saved mileage points). The moment I boarded, the flight attendant asked me, “would you care for some complimentary champagne?” “Please!” That was a wonderful surprise. Good thing I’m not a heavy drinker. But I did take all of the macadamia nuts I could get. I did not win the “guess when we reach the half-way point to Hawaii” contest, unfortunately. Airline food was still edible back then, too…the entree was teriyaki chicken, I think, garnished with shiitake mushrooms.

I joined my parents at their hotel (some modest high-rise) and we boarded the Independence a day later.

Much of the cruise kind of blurs together in my memory. The Independence and her sister, the Constitution, were owned by America-Hawaii Cruises, a now-defunct American company that sent each ship on a weekly cruise around the Hawaiian islands.
At that time, only an American company’s ships could do that. I believe, even today, some cruise lines’ ships must divert to another island partway through a cruise around Hawaii to comply with US law.

The ship was 1950’s vintage, old enough to have served as a passenger liner before air travel basically killed off all but pleasure cruising. She stank of fuel oil all the time. The food service was mediocre. You could have all the coffee, tea, milk, water or Postum (if memory serves) you wanted at a meal, it was included in the ticket price, but soft drinks were extra, and they charged bar prices for soft drinks. I wound up buying a six pack at one of the ports of call and keeping the cans on ice in my stateroom.

The ship’s theater had a full program of science fiction films. I dropped in briefly a couple of times, but really–there’s better things to do when you’re cruising around paradise.

There were a few educational seminars leading up to the eclipse. George Keene had much to tell us about how to photograph the eclipse and view it safely in the partial phases. I was pleased when he described what he considered the most well-rounded telescope for photographing an eclipse–1000mm focal length, about 90 to 100mm aperture–the exact specifications of my Celestron C90 spotting scope. Attach a camera to the back of such a telescope, and it puts a nice-size image of the moon or a solar eclipse on the 35mm negative, the disk of the object on the negative being about 1/4 of an inch across. As a science fiction fan and science major I was already knowledgeable about why eclipses occur, but Mr. Keene’s explanations were much-needed by many folks, my parents included. One piece of advice he offered that really helped was to fire the camera shutter when the ship was almost motionless, i.e., at the top or the bottom of the rolling motion.

Joe Rao explained the weather situation during our cruise–missing the eclipse due to an overcast sky was a real possibility. Joe and our Captain were the heroes of our trip, they found a spot in the ocean free of cloud cover for most, if not all of the eclipse. There were only two groups of people in Hawaii that day who got to see the totality–those of us on the sister ships, and folks atop Mauna Kea, near the newly-built Keck telescope. The rest of Hawaii was too far from the path of totality, and much of the Big Island was covered in clouds, except of course, on Mauna Kea.

I remember getting several of your books signed by you, which I had brought along for that purpose.

I had the shots I wanted to take carefully planned in a notebook. Pretty much everyone was at the starboard rail just before sunrise. I had my Pentax MX camera attached to my telescope, with a solar filter fastened to the front, ready to go. My parents had their cameras ready to photograph the totality. As the sun rose, the partial phase of the eclipse was already in progress. I only took a few pictures of the partial phases–the totality was the star of the show. Once the partial phase was down to a sliver, off came the filter, in went a roll of Kodachrome in the camera, and I began shooting the totality. I worked my way up from short exposures to increasingly longer exposures, movement of the ship permitting, of course. It was a good thing George Keene had warned everyone to make sure the flashes were turned off on their cameras!

I didn’t neglect to look up from the camera a few times and just enjoy the eclipse. Unbelievable. The eclipsed Sun looked like a hole in the sky in the midst of twilight.

After the cruise, I stayed with my parents for a day at a beautiful hotel that no longer exists. My parents had taken the whole family to Hawaii on vacations several times before, and we always stayed at the Waikikian. It was a two-story tiki-style hotel surrounded by gardens, right between the Ilikai Hotel (the one Jack Lord was standing atop during the opening credits of Hawaii Five-O) and the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Sadly, the Waikikian was torn down a few years ago to make way for tower of time-share condominiums.

First-class going home from Hawaii was certainly comfortable, but not nearly as fun. No champagne or macadamia nuts, certainly The in-flight movie was a Steve Martin comedy: L.A. Story.

And I remember this piece, and am pleased as punch to read it again, or any other gems from the past.

OMNI is very much missed, especially its early days before the covers began to look alike (all popular science magazine covers began looking alike in the 80s, generally a blank-eyed humanoid head of some sort against a Daliesque landscape..it may say something deep about the spirit of the times, but I’m at a loss to explain it).

First time I saw my writing in print was in the OMNI letter column…October 1979…

It turned me on to some great SF, too. Unfortunately, about 1981, it took a disturbing turn by publishing a cartoon feature that mocked anyone with religious beliefs. I quit reading it. I heard that the magazine apologized for the article. Sadly, that was a harbinger of things to come on the internet. If you believe in a higher being, be prepared to be skewered at most discussion boards…