Pearl Harbor Revisited and a Sunset Cruise

We headed back over to Pearl Harbor yesterday to tour the U.S.S Bowfin submarine and the U.S.S. Missouri battleship. Once we were on board the Bowfin, we met an intepreter, Vanetta, who was the staff person explaining the operations compartment in the submarine. Vanetta moved to Hawaii from Ohio to go to school out here. It was nice to be able to chat with her and ask questions. We obtained scripts for all of the audio tours so we had access to the tour information, but nothing beats chatting directly with the staff.

Two of the videos at Pearl Harbor were not closed captioned. The video in the Pearl Harbor museum supposedly had captions but the captioning wasn't working. The video on the Missouri was not captioned at all. We did view the Pearl Harbor movie with rear window captioning-- a system that I'm not thrilled with at all. I really wish there was an option to turn on open captions when needed.



Later that night, we headed over to the harbor to board the Star of Honolulu for a sunset cruise. We pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that we weren't going to see a sunset. It was cloudy and gray when we left. The food was delicious and the entertainment was fantastic. There's something about Hawaiian guys moving their hands and hips--makes a girl want to move out here. The staff signed "America the Beautiful" at the end with a combination of ASL and gestures. It really moved me.

For five awesome minutes, the sun broke through the clouds and we were able to view the sunset: