As promised in our previous post, the short video we shot of the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge from the coastal road can be found here.

A small update (08/07/2010): I wrote yesterday in this post that it was the Black Pearl but I just found out that it was no longer named the Black Pearl but the ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’, Captain Blackbeard’s ship. This probably explains why the ship looks so damaged (and why they were rebuilding the ship when it first arrived). The ship, however, did arrive as the Black Pearl, but the current name is the Queen Anne’s Revenge.. Due to this, I changed the titles and text in this message of this message a bit.

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I have blogged before about the Pirates of the Caribbean and them going to film here in Hawaii but until recently we thought it wouldn’t be really accessible, it would’ve been more luck than anything else to see something of it all.

However, last week, we read in the local paper that they were filming in a pretty nice accessible location and today we decided to take a look if they were still there. After searching a bit along the coast (we knew on what side of the island they would be but not the exact location haha), I suddenly noticed a few masts and figured I would know where the ship would be, and I was right (they would be here for about two weeks, or so we were told, so if you are in the area and want to take a look in the coming days, you can find them here (click)).

Unfortunately we didn’t see them actually do some filming, and we didn’t see Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) either (it was probably too late on the day), but we did see the ship ‘the Black Pearl’ ‘the Queen Anne’s Revenge’. I can tell you it looked a lot better than the last time we’ve seen it, when they were still building and doing repairs and such (see pictures of that here). It looked more ‘finished’ now. Well.. finished?

To be honest, it kind of looked like the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge has been on fire… I don’t know if this is supposed to be because of the many fights in the earlier movies of the Pirates of the Caribbean, or if it was something that happened in this movie (and what we will have to see when the movie comes out). It is, however, very clear that when you look closely on the pictures that you can see the ship was pretty battered. The masts look a lot shorter than they should be (or so I think), you can see soot and burned wood everywhere, pieces of railing are missing and you can continue this list. It was pretty cool to see.

Next to the pictures of the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge we also made a few pictures of the surroundings, which I will add below, so who knows, you might recognize some of the area when you’re watching the movie

And like promised, a few pictures of the surroundings.. I am curious if we will still recognize it all when we watch the movie..

We also filmed a little bit from the road that goes around the bay over there, I still have to convert that and upload it to Youtube. When that’s done, I will add it to our blog

Recently someone told me that it seemed as if I posted more messages through Twitter than actual blog posts. This is true, of course, I do post more frequent on Twitter. It is however, as far as I think, not really like I write less on this blog than before. I have said it once before, there is not always material to make a nice long blog post, and often I just didn’t write anything back then when I didn’t use Twitter yet, but now you get to see those things in small messages so basically there is more to read about than before, which seems even better to me

Anyways, it is time for a bit longer post right now

Yesterday we went out in search of the Black Pearl, the ship from Pirates of the Carribean. I told about it before, that they would shoot their fourth movie (’On Stranger Tides’) here in Hawaii, and I also knew that the ship arrived about a month ago and that it was in dry dock for repairs and such. They wrote about this in the local newspaper, and that’s also why I knew it was not somewhere inside, but that you could easily see it from the road.

And that was true!

We found the ship after a short search in about the spot where we expected it (here), there was a fence but you could easily look through the fence. We looked at it from a parkinglot near a boat ramp, from which I just found out it was a private boat ramp (which explains the security at the entrance of the parking, who was not there, by the way, when we entered it). I don’t know how far they could stop us from going there, though, according to Hawaii state law they always have to grant you access to the coastline. I think they just want to discourage people from going there than to really stop them.

Whatever it is, we did see it, and pretty clear as well. Here are some pictures:

As you can see, the Black Pearl is currently not really black, it’s more like black-brown.. I think they will give it a new color (well, it will probably be black haha), and that they sanded it because of that. You can also see that they removed the cabin from the stern and that it now just shows a framework. The figurehead is gone, and so are the masts. They’re really renewing some things on it, and probably also adjust some things for the new movie.

You can see one of the guards sitting on a chair behind the fence on the second picture, they hired those because of the large number of people who want to see the ship.

Here are some more photo’s:

Some of the materials that you can see in the foreground of the pictures are, I think, from the Black Pearl itself. Many of those things look like how you can expect them on a ship such as this.

By the way, I think we viewed this ship pretty late when you see the following pictures of when the ship was only just in dry dock about a month ago. I also added a photo of how the ship looks like in the movie itself. By the way, these pictures are not made by us, they come from the Honolulu Advertiser website:

Like I said, you couldn’t see the stern like that anymore, which is a shame really. I would’ve loved to see it with those statues and such. Oh well, they still have to shoot the movie, who knows, I might get lucky and see some of that.

A fun fact: The Black Pearl (or ‘Sunset’ as it’s name really is) is actually a motorboat with a maximum speed of 9 knots. The masts are only there for the view, and it is actually a ship around a ship.

After we took some pictures here, we went to the other side of the harbor, to the Ko’olina resorts, where you can find some lagoons, and where you can walk nicely with a stroller and such. And because the people from Europe and the US mainland want to see the summer so badly, here are some pictures to get you started haha:

For those who wonder why I am wearing a black thing around my wrist, this is because I recently found out that I have a Carpal Tunnel Syndroom. The splint is making sure that I can’t move my wrist too weirdly and such. Not so nice to have, but I think it is the price I have to pay for all those years (about 25 years) of sitting behind a computer too much. I will now have to take it much easier when it comes to computers and such (and I am doing that also).

In the last picture you can see a building that is still under construction. This is going to be the new Disney resort: Disney Aulani. I think this is going to be a beautiful (and very expensive) resort when I look at the the pictures and drawings.

In the second last photo it looks like there is a pineapple growing in a tree.. which isn’t the case.. I have no idea what it really is but it is no pineapple, that’s for sure haha. It kind of also looks like a way too big pinecone.

And then we went back home again. However, when we were on our way to the car, I noticed that we could also see the Black Pearl really well from this side of the harbor:

So if you really cannot get in on that side of the harbor, then you should just go to the Ko’olina resorts with binoculars or a zoom lens for your camera (you can also see it really well with just your eyes, by the way), where you can still easily view it.

And that was our little trip of yesterday.. I don’t think I have much more to tell you. If there is anything else, I will let you know

Oh, we will go out for swimming soon (and you might not believe this, but it will be the first time since I am here, can you imagine that? Hahaha!).. we bought a few of those swimming pants with diapers inside of them for Isabella, a factor 50 sunblock, and we will buy a small hat and a thing for her to sit in, in the water.. that’s all going to work out nicely, I am looking forward to it already

Here’s a new message from us, it has been a while so I figured we could write something again

I think I will start with Michelle and the baby as everything goes very well with them, we finally figured out a name for the baby, also thanks to my daughter Larissa, who was asked to make the final decision between a couple of names. Michelle can feel the baby kick quite a lot of times lately, but of course you’ll see that I am out of luck when I want to feel it, as the baby instantly stops when I put my hand on her belly.. Oh well, I’d like to think she doesn’t wants to hurt her daddy

We went out during last friday and saturday, mostly because of my birthday. Yep, I start to become an old ba***rd haha. Nah, it’s not that bad haha. Next to all the presents that I received from the Netherlands, I received a new digital slr camera from Michelle, including 2 zoomlenses, filters and some more stuff. It’s really a nice camera, which had to be tested, of course

Well, I can tell you that I have to learn a lot as it is no longer point-and-shoot, no, I can adjust all settings myself now, such as the whitebalance, lighting, arpeture, etc. etc. Of course you can adjust some settings on a normal digital camera, but not many people do this, but it is much more fun to do it with this camera haha.

Anyways, we went to the southcoast last friday, where some people were surfing. We went here mostly so I could see if I could zoom in some more with this camera (surfing usually happens on quite some distance from the coast). And I have to say it works pretty nice, here some pictures:

The first picture has been made smaller, mostly because it was shot in a big size. The second picture is the same as the first, but cropped and on, almost, normal size .

Above pictures are just to show how far you can zoom with this thing, the surfer in the picture was quite far from the coast. Below some more pictures, shot on the same spot:

Some photos are sadly a bit darker than I wanted them to be (also because of the clouds during the day), but oh well, we only just have this camera, we still have a lot to learn

Before we went to Waikiki for a dinner, we went to town when it started to become evening. I shot some more pictures there, mostly because I wanted to make a panorama picture and wanted to shoot some photos during the sunset. Here are a few of those pictures:

I know these are almost the same photos, but I wanted to show that the sky of Hawaï knows many colors, especially during sunset. There is only a few minutes during the above photos.Here are a few more photos:

And then we were sent away by the security.. we were there quite some time and they thought it was pretty suspicious that there were some people, shooting photos, from the roof of the parking garage. It was too bad, but oh we, we decided to go towards Waikiki for our dinner.

As for the panorama photo, here’s one (I made it smaller in size, the original was about 20 megabyte big):

It’s quite easy to make such a panorama photo, you just have to make sure that the camera is on a tripod, that you make enough photos to overlap everything (I believe there’s 34 photo’s in the above panorama), and that you use the right software. I use a free program, and I have to say it works like a charm. The program does everything for me, place the photo’s, align them, adjust the shades etc etc.

Right, we went to Waikiki after all this and we decided to drive through town afterwards, so we could find a certain building (I will place the photo of this building below). Just when we found this building, the police pulled me over (or I should say, I drove into a parkinglot and he then came on from behind). It turned out that I didn’t stop for a stopsign. He checked our papers and checked if I didn’t drank any alcohol (probably because we said that we had a dinner just before, and I have to say that it is not like the Netherlands where they use a breath analyzer, no, I had to follow a pen with my eyes while he aimed a flashlight on my eyes… I don’t know but I doubt this is a correct way to do it.. oh well, I didn’t drink anything so I didn’t had to worry). After a short lecture, he let me go without a ticket. I was pretty lucky with that. I have no idea why, but I think it might have been because of my birthday, that he had seen the birthdate on the driver license. According to Michelle it might also have been that it was because I didn’t cause any problems and just stayed nice, or because I was honest about my mistake… whatever it was, I like to stick with my birthday as for explanation

But oh well, the building we were looking for is the following:

Looks good, doesn’t it? (Yes, I know, I used a lens which made stars of the lights, I shouldn’t have done this but oh well haha.. it’s all in a learning process).

Can you believe this is just a mural, and not something like 3D?

This piece of art has been painted in 18 months (10 to 14 hours a day) by an artist named ‘John Pugh’. They wrote the following about it in the local paper:

“Pugh said the epic wave behind surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku is Queen Lili’uokalani herself, whose enduring legacy lives on through the children’s center named for her and in other ways. To get the wave just right, he hired a glass artist to make a model of a wave he could study throughout.

He said the children shown in the mural offer gifts that pay tribute to the queen. In a window to the right side is Prince Kuhio, who served in Congress and created the Hawaiian homes act to return more Hawaiians to the land.”

So, yeah, to prove that it is just a mural, here’s a photo from up close:

That this painting can really fool people shows from a part in the same article in the local paper, where they wrote about a crew of firemen who thought that the children in the mural were stuck and couldn’t come down any more. When they wanted to save them, they found out about their mistake haha.

Ok, tomorrow, or the day after, I will post a new message about last Saturday. We also went out on that day, and I made some photo’s in a botanical garden. But ok, that kind of depends on how busy I am (I am quite busy lately for some reason). And now to bed, it’s getting late..