the nina, the pinta, and the ...

...oh, that's it.  Just the Nina and the Pinta.  When we were down in Fort Myers for Christmas, we went to the Nina and Pinta replicas that were on display at Fisherman's Village in Punta Gorda.  These boats were built to be as similar to the real ones as possible, including the methodologies used to make them. The Nina was built to be a replica, but the Pinta was actually intended to be a tour boat in the Caymon Islands so it is 1.5 the actually size of the real Pinta, which is crazy because both these ships were surprisingly small.

There were some volunteers on the ships that answered questions and gave us some interesting facts. First of all, Columbus was a giant.  He was 6 foot 1 while the height of those on board were from 4 foot 1 to 4 foot 9. No wonder he had a commanding presence. These shorties had to stay on the front half of the ship on the deck which really wasn't much room at all for about 30 men, even if they were short.  Columbus' favorite ship was in the Nina which took 38 days to cross the Atlanta.  I could not imagine how awful it would have been.

Here are some pictures of our visit:

The flannel boys