The Oceana occultation at 3:55am passed nominally through the SF Bay area, but had a wide uncertainty range which Santa Cruz was well inside of, and odds of success were 27%. The star was in Auriga, and was easy to find, but quite faint - at the limit of visibility in the camcorder LCD. Skies were damp but very clear and moonless and the target was high overhead. The combined image was m=12.1, the faintest I've successfully recorded. With frame stacking I could've gone a few tenths lower. Result: a miss, as the star could clearly be followed during the entire period.
The main event was an occultation of a 9.1 star by Meliboea at 5:35am, with high rank and Cabrillo was on the northern limit. I'd originally planned to do an Astro 9 trip to Mercey Hot Springs which was much deeper into the path. But rain the day before and lack of interest from Astro 9rs, had me thinking of Plan B - drive to San Juan Bautista, where my odds were still 68% and it wasn't much of a drive. But I failed to awake with my alarm clock, waking up instead at 3:00am, and I was barely able to get to Cabrillo and set up for the Oceana event. There was then no time to repack and drive anywhere, so I did Meliboea from Cabrillo as well. Odds of being inside the path were 46%. There were 7 other stations claimed, but most were in New Zealand, which was clouded out. That left me and Derek as the only observers for this very favorable event. Derek was 5 km closer in than me, and we both had a miss. Dirty tape heads prevented me from getting a recording anyway, as it turned out on later playback. Later that day, it was obvious I was coming down with the flu - so basically today really went downhill from the get-go. Sigh...