**Editor’s note: Dave Eicher prepared this blog just hours before last night’s eclipse. Check out our solar eclipse page to read a recap of Dave’s Twitter (@AstronomyMag) updates throughout the eclipse. Stay tuned for a full report and eclipse images coming soon!**
As I sit here writing this, it's 6:30 Wednesday morning in China, on ECLIPSE DAY! The weather forecast has been horrible for most of the region, but our ship's captain has docked us at Yichang, west of Wuhan, and we have a little scattered cloud with mostly sunny skies right now. It's less than three hours to totality, and so we are very hopeful that we're going to see it well! The weather prospects south and east of here are even dicier, so we're feeling fortunate.
See all the images from Dave's tour in our solar eclipse 2009 trip gallery.
Yesterday we had an exceptional day of touring. Our ship, the Victoria Princess, docked along the Yangtze River near Shennong Stream,l and we set off on an excursion with a ferry down one of the tributaries to look at the local landscape surrounding it. After a 3-kilometer journey, we transferred to tiny "peapod" boats that held 15 passengers and had a hard-working crew of several who rowed us downstream! It was an incredible display of energy from the trackers, who at one point had to get out of the boats and use a rope to pull us downstream because of the shallow draft.
Along the way we observed many interesting villages, caves (some of which held locals who hid in them during Japanese bombing raids during the 1930s), and, most spectacularly, hanging coffins.
What in the heck are hanging coffins?
The locals in this area felt that "burying" their dead as high up as possible would facilitate the journey to heaven. These coffins are tied with ropes and stuck in cavities in the sheer rock dozens or hundreds of feet high and are at least 2,000 years old.
Our second great excursion before eclipse day took us to the world's largest engineering project, the Three Gorges Dam. This $25 billion construction generates a massive amount of hydroelectric power and is just being completed this year. It has significantly changed the river downstream and is somewhat controversial.
Amazingly, the dam, which was supposed to generate 10 percent of China's energy needs, now provides just 3 percent of China's because the country’s energy consumption is growing so quickly. In another decade, that amount will drop to only 1 percent. It is the largest dam in the world and is amazingly huge.
After returning to the ship, while we ate dinner, the ship passed through the first of four locks, a process that altogether lasted three hours. While we were still passing through, Senior Editor Rich Talcott presented his excellent talk on the eclipse itself, a major feature of the tour the passengers were all waiting for. We are all primed for this morning's big event, and it looks like we're in luck to see it, defying the poor odds in most of Asia. [UPDATE: Dave’s trip indeed defied the odds and enjoyed a clear view of the entire eclipse. Unfortunately, Senior Editor Michael Bakich’s tour group was not so lucky. The group was mired in a down pour from their site at Nine Dragons Resort in Jiaxing and watched local TV coverage of the event.]
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