THE PINTA AND THE NINA SAIL AGAIN!

Replicas of two of Christopher Columbus' three famous ships are bringing history alive on their current good-will tour of the eastern US.  A ship's officer is pictured above on the gangway of the Nina discussing the ship's history with Sue (holding crutches) and NY friend Dee Weeks.

The two vessels were spending several days in the port of Stuart, FL and will be working their way north via

the intercoastal waterway to Maine then the Great Lakes later this summer.  The Pinta is in the background with its furled sails visible.

I stood on the dock and pondered the fact the original Pinta and Nina along with the Santa Maria carried Columbus and his crew across the Atlantic on their voyage which discovered what we now know as the Americas in 1492.

The Nina was 65 feet long.  A great blue whale can reach a length of 100 feet and weigh twice the Nina's displacement of 80 tons.  She had a crew of 24 men betting their lives on an ocean voyage with a vessel just over 1/2 the size of the whale and doing it in a period of time when some folks still believed the world was flat.

Columbus' thee ships originally were common trading vessels of the time.  The Pinta returned home from this voyage of discovery and disappeared from history.  The Nina completed the round trip and returned Columbus home safely then made the second voyage to Hispaniola then Columbus selected her for his flagship.  She ultimately brought Columbus and 120 passengers back to Spain in 1496.

The Nina logged 25,000 miles under Columbus' command.

There is no replica of the Santa Maria because she never made it back to Europe.  And, Columbus was known not to like her because she was "very slow and clumsy".

These two replicas went under construction in 1988 when American engineer and maritime historian John Sarsfield began work on what was to become the first truly, historically correct replica of a 15th century Caravel.

Sarsfield had discovered a group of master builders in Valenca, Brazil who were still using design and construction techniques dating to the 15th century.  Only axes, adzes, hand saws and chisels along with naturally-shaped timbers from local forests were used on Sarsfield's Nina.

The Pinta was built 16 years later and the two ships have no home port.  They are moving 11 months out of the year.  The original Pinta had a crew of 26.  Today they are crewed by 9 on the Pinta and 7 on the Nina.

A ships officer told me they only travel under sail when they enjoy "a prolonged tailwind on a large body of water".  Meaning, of course, they too are rather clumsy.

Both have auxiliary power; the Nina with a single, 230 HP diesel engine and the Pinta with a pair of 130 HP engines.  The ships are black because they covered in pine tar which is naturally water resistant.

The crews had no real quarters on these vessels, sleeping randomly on the open decks and enjoying the cover of this small aft compartment only in inclement weather.  Imagine that for the historical voyage that took a little over 7 months.  Today this compartment is used to display souvenirs. 

Even though they travel mainly by engine power, all lines on the vessels are exercised regularly to insure their integrity for use when possible--and laboriously building marine skills of the deck hands. 

Dick Weeks photographs the aft end (stern) of the Nina.  The yacht over his right shoulder in the distance was about the same length of the Nina but with substantially more comfortable accommodations.