By MADDY VITALE
All eyes were definitely on the sky Monday to view the solar eclipse for the first time since 2017.
In Ocean City, “watch parties” enjoyed taking in the sights, as the moon passed over the sun.
People gathered at the Music Pier and the beach and everywhere else on the island to watch the spectacular display.
Prior to 2017, there hadn’t been a solar eclipse for 38 years. Experts say the next solar eclipse won’t take place in the United States until Aug. 23, 2044. So, Monday was definitely special.
Some spectators had some interesting thoughts on what the solar eclipse looked like.
“I see a cookie,” Kathy Canum, of Ocean City, said with a laugh.
She and about 20 fellow Freedom Boat Club members joined at the Ninth Street beach for the event.
Barbara Makoski, also of the Somers Point-based beach club, marveled at the rare sighting.
“I’m laughing because I saw something on Facebook last night about Oreo cookies,” Makoski said with a chuckle. “The eclipse does kind of remind me of an Oreo cookie with the filling.”
Tiffany Lionetti, event manager for the boat club, said she always gets boat club members together for special events, and this one tops them all.
And while people in Ocean City were enjoying the spectacle above, in which the sun glowed brilliantly then gradually became shrouded by the moon, so were millions of other eclipse watchers across the country.
“We have other beach gatherings at our Delaware beach club and one in Maryland, too. So, we have three big watch parties going on,” Lionetti said.
Judy and Dutch Hartzell, of Williamstown, made it a point to come down to their second home in Ocean City to watch the solar eclipse.
“I just think it’s so cool. I think it’s the coolest thing of nature,” Judy Hartzell said. “We wanted to watch it in Ocean City. Some people say, ‘Oh, I’ll watch it on TV.’ It’s not the same. We want to see the eclipse in person.”
Dutch agreed with his wife of 49 years, saying that watching the eclipse on TV is “like Halley’s Comet coming by and not wanting to see it.”
Like the Hartzells, Diego and Leah Quiroz, of Lancaster, Pa., chose Ocean City to view the display.
“We always come to Ocean City on our days off,” Diego Quiroz said.
Leah Quiroz followed up, “We definitely had it in our mind when we were choosing where we were going to go for a weekend off that this would be a good spot to see the eclipse. Today is a beautiful day to be out and a perfect spot to watch it.”
If you wanted to view the eclipse and figured you could just pick up a pair of protective glasses at a Boardwalk shop Monday, you were likely be out of luck.
Wes Kazmarck, president of the Boardwalk Merchants Association and co-owner of Surf Mall, said people who wanted to grab a pair of solar glasses at the last minute may have had to search around for a shop on the boards, or anywhere else for that matter, to purchase the glasses.
“We sold out of the glasses in about an hour yesterday,” Kazmarck said. “And it wasn’t even busy.”
Anne Marie Steelman, of Galloway Township, didn’t have a pair of glasses when she strolled onto the Music Pier.
And she wasn’t going to be able to see the solar eclipse because of it.
But still, she wanted to experience being outside and in Ocean City when the magic did happen.
She had tried to get glasses from the Galloway Township branch of the Atlantic County Library System. The library staff was giving them out Monday morning.
“I called the library and they said the glasses were available. By the time I brushed my teeth and washed my face and ran down to the library only about 20 minutes went by. There were no more glasses,” Steelman explained.
Steelman, who has two girls, ages 10 and 14, warned her daughters, who were at school, not to look up at the sky.
“I kept texting them saying, ‘Don’t look up at the sky,’” she said.
Despite not getting her hands on a pair of glasses, she had a plan.
“I am going to take pictures with my cellphone with my back to the sun,” she said with a laugh. “I have a cousin in Maine on the line of totality and my brother is in Austin, Texas, on the line of totality, so we are going to get good pictures no matter what.”
