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

Yesterday I wrote that we made a video of Queen Mary 2’s departure, I put it on Youtube on the following location: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX5GGsX5Z6c

The video’s playback is at double speed which I did because it might become quite a boring video otherwise.. It all doesn’t go that quick haha.

The soundsignal which you hear on the beginning of the video is the original signal of the Queen Mary 2 which she made just before she left.. I can tell you that it is a wonder that we’re not deaf yet, so loud! The rest of the video is without the original sound but with backgroundmusic.

Last Friday I read in the papers that today, on sunday, at around 6 AM, the Queen Mary 2 would arrive in Honolulu. I once saw the Queen Mary 2 on National Geographic and I knew it was a very nice ship, so I thought we had to head towards Aloha Tower today where she would be docked in the area until 5 PM.

And so we did.

We arrived around 4.15 PM, so we had enough time to make a few pictures before it would leave. Unfortunately our luck didn’t take that long as it started to rain but thankfully it was just short as it you can see it here more often so we didn’t get too wet. The sky, at the other hand, was very scary, I expected pretty big shower but, as with a miracle, it didn’t rain until the ship left. And even then it wasn’t all that bad, it was a short one again and that was it again… I think the rain fell mostly at the other side of the mountains, as it usually does.

Of course we have some pictures, mostly made by Michelle.. I was more busy making a video of their leave. I will upload a youtube video a bit later

And again I felt a bit artistic:

We saw that the ropes were loosened, the Queen Mary 2 gave some sound signals and the ship slowly backed away from the docks thanks to the strong bow engines. She then slowly went backwards and at the same time it turned 180 degrees around her axes (and no, not vertical, of course haha).

After the Queen Mary 2 was in the right direction, she slowly sailed towards open sea. I have to say that it was a pretty impressive sight. The Queen Mary 2 is the longest cruiseship in the world (not the biggest, by the way, there are even bigger ships but those are higher instead of longer) and I think it was really remarkable that this ship had no problem turning around in such a small water. Ok, there was probably a pilot on board of the ship (which normally happens when a ship of such a size is in the harbor, the pilots know their harbors really well and, for example, know exactly where it is deep enough) but I mean without the help of tugs and such.

After the Queen Mary 2 was even further away, we went towards Aloha Tower to eat a bit. I thought it was really something special to see a ship this size.

Here are three more pictures that we took today near Aloha Tower.. they don’t have anything to do with water or ships, they’re just nice pictures I think (especially the last two since my sister (she is a blonde, so forgif her haha, just kidding sis ) asked me if they also have that kind of buildings here:

I know, I know… I promised to post the pictures of the other two (Christmas)parade’s but we were so busy lately with all kinds of things that I didn’t had any time any more (or I just forgot about it on the other days lol) to post those pictures..

excuses, excuses..

Right, here are the pictures of the boat parade:

And that was the parade.. nah, just kidding hehe.. We took these pictures while we were waiting for the boats… here are the real pictures

I will post the pictures of the other parade soon.. I hope