Orange County Proves Lucky for Eclipse Fans : Sun: Clouds spoil ‘ring of fire’ for many sky-gazers, but South County hills teem with happy spectators.

Eclipse fever hit Southern California on Saturday as thousands took to the beaches and hills in hope of seeing the sun disappear, although for many the rare and spectacular display known as the “ring of fire” was obscured by clouds.

The lucky ones were along the coast in Orange County, where clouds held off long enough to give a good view to the crowds who got through congested roads to reach the beach just before sunset and in time to see the eclipse.

“I was afraid it would be cloudy, but someone up there likes us,” said Sandra Stubban, who viewed the eclipse in Laguna Beach with relatives.

People came to one hillside in San Clemente from as far as Santa Cruz and Merced. Those lengthy journeys amazed Paul Imbach, who had to drive only from his house at the bottom of the hill.

“This is just a little spot here,” Imbach said. “I was surprised to see so many people from so far away. I enjoyed it.”

Helen Walther, 75, of Brea had been standing on Inspiration Point in Corona del Mar since 1:30 p.m. because she wanted to get there before the crowds.

“My daughter who lives in Upstate New York read about it in the New York Times and said, ‘Mom, you’ve got to see it,’ ” Walther said. “I’m not at all disappointed. It’s fascinating and exciting. . . . It’s been wonderful.”

When the sun descended into a bank of clouds, it prompted dejected sighs from a cluster of about three dozen people on a strip of beach in San Clemente.

Ryan and Tammy Thorp began walking away. “The dumb cloud got in the way,” said Thorp, 28, a Marine Corps communications sergeant at Camp Pendleton who lives in San Clemente.

“Oh, look, you can see a little of it,” said his 24-year-old wife. “This only happens once every 20,000 years.”

At 4:45 p.m., the bottom half of the sun sank to an opening in the cloud cover, and suddenly the ring was visible to those clustered on the rocks.

“Wow, you can see it, it is like flames, like fire shooting from it,” said one young woman who was watching the eclipse with two small children.

“Wow, that sun is really big, this is cool, Mom,” her brown-haired daughter said.

At Griffith Observatory in the Hollywood Hills, a festive crowd of scientists, hobbyists and the curious peered west at sunset. But moody Mother Nature broke up the party and sent them home disappointed.

Evy and Herb Cades, a Van Nuys couple in their 70s, quipped that they would be back the next time an annular eclipse can be viewed in Southern California--in 20,000 years or so. “Same time, same place,” Evy Cades said.

Traffic was heavy on many parts of the coast. In Laguna Beach, cars were backed up for miles on the two main routes into the city, and Main Beach was nearly as crowded as the Fourth of July holiday. Parking lots that are usually deserted in January were filled.

Jerry Stewart said he and his wife took the chance that the weather would lift and made the drive from Corona. “You have to wait another 20,000 years to see it again,” Stewart said, “and who wants to wait?”

Lois Wenholz of Anaheim sat on the boardwalk of the beach and compared the experience favorably to the total eclipse she witnessed in Alaska in the 1960s.

“I am much more excited,” she said. “I have been anticipating this for a long time.”

Saturday’s eclipse was relatively rare because it occurred when the moon’s image was not quite as large as the sun’s, and thus not all of the sun was blocked out. Adding to the rarity: The eclipse took place at sunset.

Just as it set, 91% of the sun was blocked out by the moon, leaving a ring of light around it.

The moon appeared smaller because it is near the point in its orbit where it is farthest from the Earth. And the Earth is at the point in its orbit where it is nearest the sun, making the sun appear larger.

This kind of a “annular” eclipse occurs on Earth about once every one to three years. But it occurs at any given spot on Earth just once every 20,000 years. It is even rarer for it to occur at sunset.

So the anticipation was easy to understand.

“We’ve been absolutely swamped all day,” said Colleen Atkinson, office manager at the Arches Liquor Store in Newport Beach, which sold 2,500 viewing glasses during the last 10 days. “We sold out our last 600 this morning in about 90 minutes.”

Other eclipse-watchers took to the high seas to get a ringside seat of the solar spectacle. Scores of private vessels headed out of ports from Los Angeles to Dana Point, and more than half a dozen sportfishing charter outfits offered special eclipse voyages Saturday.

Out on the seaside bluffs of Corona del Mar, astronomy aficionado Larry Decker, 53, set up his homemade telescope, a contraption including lenses from a microscope and a discarded overhead projector. Made originally by the computer repairman as a telescope to view sunspots, he adapts it for eclipses and TV camera recordings.

“It was born from junk parts,” he said. “It’s a projection telescope that everyone can see the eclipse in without hurting their eyes, the only one like it in the entire world.”

Nearby, science teacher Gwen Heistand, 58, of Long Beach and two friends were fiddling with a telescope, tripods, six lenses and two cameras.

“Eclipses are one of the most elusive phenomena on this Earth. . . . This was another eclipse escapade today,” she said.

Despite the conditions, she was not disappointed.

“If the eclipse didn’t happen, we’d have to find some other excuse to get together and get out of the house,” she said.

At Moulton Meadows Park in the hills above Laguna Beach, about 100 people gathered for the event. Among them was Michael Kauper, 44, of Minneapolis, who planned a visit with his mother to coincide with the eclipse.

Kauper looked through the 8-inch telescope he brought on the trip. He liked the sight.

“There it is. It’s beautiful. It really is,” he said. “I can see about half of the ring, and there are some clouds cutting across it that make it exceptionally pretty.

“It’s very much a psychological event. It’s not inherently that exciting, but we know what we are looking at. We know what it represents and what a marvelous coincidence it is.”

“We saw a pretty sight,” Thomas Lombard, 63, said with a shrug. “We met some nice people. The clouds obliterated most of it, but at least we had some fun.”

Many people waited until the last minute to prepare. That contrasted sharply with the detailed planning that many astronomy aficionados undertook before the spectacular total eclipse that raced across parts of Mexico in July.

Jeff Sloan, a Costa Mesa optical engineer, said he spent years thinking and planning for his summer trip to the tip of Baja California to watch that eclipse. But he did not begin preparing for Saturday’s event until a few weeks ago.

Still, Sloan did a lot more than most Southlanders: He spent several days combing the county coast for the best spot to watch, finally settling on a vacant lot high in the hills of San Clemente, overlooking the Pacific.

Armed with cameras and telescopes, Sloan and about 20 friends settled in at the spot in the middle of the afternoon. After the July spectacle, Sloan had few great expectations.

“This is one that’s a lot more spontaneous than the Baja trip,” Sloan said. “My goals for this one are rather low. But if things work out, then I think this could be almost as good an experience as the one in July.”

Although the sun sank behind a bank of clouds during much of the eclipse, Sloan said he was not disappointed.

“With Baja being a 10, this was a 7,” he said. “This was better than just OK. The very end, where there was just an arch (of sunlight), was very pretty.”

Nearby, Rick Jones of Orange offered even higher praise.

“It doesn’t get much better than this,” Jones said. “Now, where’s the Swedish bikini team?”

The murky view of the eclipse didn’t disappoint Pat Thomas, an astronomy buff from West Covina who came to the San Clemente hilltop to watch the eclipse with two friends.

“To see even that much is spectacular,” Thomas said. “I think all things considered we have nothing to complain about.”

Thomas and his buddies lugged in seven cameras and telescopes, including a video camera with a color monitor. They planned to return to the Los Angeles area and join other friends for an eclipse party.

Watching the final beams of light before the sun faded, Thomas declared the solar spectacle concluded. “Well,” he said, “I think the fat lady sings.”

Times Science Writer Lee Dye and staff writers Kristina Lindgren, Marla Cone, Rose Kim and correspondent Leslie Herzog contributed to this story