Tag Archives: eagle

Eagle!

Cara caraThere are lots of birds here on Curacao. Full stop. The island is on the migratory route of over 5000 birds, so we see lots of wonderful looking birds, often for just a short time.

We have an indigenous hawk called the cara cara which is a pretty big predator around here. We’ve seen it take out some of the local cats even!

But my bird news is getting an eagle on the par 5 hole number 17 at our Blue Bay golf course. It’s one of the longest holes on the course so a good drive is important. I hit a nice ball, right in the center of the fairway, and it rolled nicely to within 175 yards.

I took my hybrid 4 wood and put it nicely on the green. The putt was 14ish feet or so? But I put it straight down the middle. Pretty thrilled with that!

Tall ships in the harbor

Tall ships in the harborPam and I spent an afternoon touring several tall ships that have docked in Curacao for the first time. The ships are training ships from many countries, including Mexico, the United States, Brazil and Venezuela. They are quite large, usually having a capacity of over 200 sailors.

The flag on the EagleThe American ship is called the Eagle, and was originally a German ship. It was acquired by the USA as part of war reparations at the end of the Second World War. The ship can take on 233 sailors and guests. Their home port is in Connecticut. It’s a training vessel for the US Coast Guard service.

The Eagle's figureheadThe Eagle was a nice vessel to tour. They had lots of signs up, explaining how the ship got to America, how it handles (14 knots under engine, 17 knots under sail), why sail when modern fleets no longer sail, etc etc. The other ships we toured were nice too, but the Eagle made it so simple to understand the complexities of what the trainees are going through.

The navigation consoleThe Simon Bolivar is a tall ship from Venezuela. She has a similar design to the Eagle. A barque class of ship, she is a training vessel for the Venezuelan Navy. Her home port is La Guairia. It literally gleamed in the sunshine. She was cleaned to a glorious shine!

The figurehead on the Simon BolivarThe sailors were all scrubbed and polished and took great pride in showing off their ships. The figurehead on the Simon Bolivar was kind of cool – almost a super hero type of statue, wrapped in the Venezuelan flag.

Now that's a flagThe Mexican entry is called the Cuauhtemoc, named for the leader of Tenochtitlan. She has sailed over 400,000 nautical miles, but looks as good as new. The sailors had her just a gleaming too. It’s a barque class ship, like the Simon Bolivar and the Eagle.

Love the figureheadI particularly liked the figurehead on this boat. Very cool. This ship is very similar in design to the Simon Bolivar, and is considered a sister ship.

Looking up There were lots of people touring all the ships and lots of picture taking going on. Sailors were being asked to get into the shots and they seemed to enjoy all the attention. We’ve put a few more shots in the Curacao 2018 gallery, so you might want to have a look at them there.

 

Newport, Oregon

Crabbing DockWe drove down to Newport, Oregon on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010. It’s about a seven hour drive, basically straight down the I-5. Newport is right on the famed Oregon Coast. We  are staying in one of our timeshares, called the Embarcadero, right on the waterfront. In fact, you could jump off our balcony, right into the ocean!

The suite is very nice. It’s a two bedroom unit, and the upper bedroom is reached via a spiral staircase. It’s a large loft-style bedroom, with a huge king sized bed. There is a small “office” that opens onto the ocean view, and has a nice little desk, overlooking the living room downstairs as well. The bathrooms are HUGE – and I mean capital HUGE. Double sinks, huge soaker tub… the bathroom alone is bigger than our first apartment!

EagleWe can sit on our deck, and watch eagles and seagulls glide over our heads, swooping down on to the water every once in a while! Quite remarkable. We arrived here around 4 in the afternoon so we haven’t really had much time to scope the place out, but there is a huge dock here where people can “do some crabbing” and Pam fully intends to catch her limit!

We’re going to explore the aquarium today; it’s supposed to be one of the ten best in the USA. We’re hoping to get a round or two of golf in while we’re here too.

I have to talk for a second about the driving on the I-5 highway: all through Washington state, the vast majority of the people drove about 5 miles an hour under the limit. The speed limit is 70, but I put the car on cruise right at 70, and always caught up to people. Most people got out of the left lane, when they saw me approaching, but one or two would not. It’s clearly signed all along the road to “Be polite” and only use the left lane for passing, for slower traffic to use the right lane, but the odd person was just stubborn. Most of the way there were three lanes, so there was really no need to block the left lane. But Oregon – now that is a completely different matter! They are the rudest drivers I have ever met! WOW! They all drive about 10 miles under the limit, and drive in the left lane like they own it. Not one person vacated the left lane, even though they were driving so slow.

Yaquina Bay Bridge

The view out our condo’s window. Pictured is the Yaquina Bay Bridge, designed by Conde B. McCullough, part of Highway 101.