LOCAL
'Columbus' ship Pinta docks in Fort Walton Beach for week
Devon Ravine
Northwest Florida Daily News

A little bit of living history will be on display in Fort Walton Beach
now through Jan. 2.

The Sanger Ship’s Pinta, a replica of one of the Portuguese caravel
sailing ships used in Christopher Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic,
is currently docked at Brooks Bridge Marina.

The 85-foot-long by 24-foot-wide ship was made in Brazil and took three
years to construct. It's made of Brazilian cherry hardwood, using the
same techniques that Portuguese shipwrights used to construct the
original craft. Completed in 2005, the ship weighs about 100 tons and
has about a 7-foot draft.

The ship Pinta, a modern-day replica of one of the ships used in
Columbus' 1492 trip across the Atlantic Ocean, sails through Santa Rosa
Sound in this photo from January, 2021. The Pinta will be available for
self-guided tours now through Jan. 2 at the Brooks Bridge Marina on
Okaloosa Island.
This version is a bit larger than the original Pinta and is powered by
diesel engines. Beyond that, there’s little evidence of modern
technology found on the deck, and steering the ship is still done by
hand using a long tiller mounted at the ship’s aft.

And while the Pinta hasn’t followed Columbus’ famous journey from Spain
to the new world in 1492, it nevertheless racks up about 8,000 to 10,000
miles per year touring ports across the eastern United States. The ship
runs a circuit around the Gulf of Mexico, up the Eastern Seaboard, into
the Great Lakes and into parts of the Illinois, Ohio, Mississippi and
Tennessee rivers.

Stephen Sanger demostrations the massive tiller used to steer the Pinta,
a replica of one of the ships used during Columbus' voyage across the
Atlantic Ocean in 1492. The ship will be on display now through Jan. 2
at the Brooks Bridge Marina on Okaloosa Island.
“We’ll start each year in Mobile,” said Stephen Sanger, the ship’s owner
and captain. “We’ll typically travel about nine months out of the year,
hitting about 20 to 30 stops.”

At each of those stops, visitors can walk the ship's deck and imagine
what it must have been like for the 26 men who sailed west across the
Atlantic Ocean for 70 days, not knowing what they would find on their
journey.

The Pinta, a modern-day replica of one of the ships used during
Columbus' 1492 journey across the Atltanic Ocean, is on display now
through Jan. 2 at the Brooks Bridge Marina on Okaloosa Island.
“Luckily for them they were cruising around the Caribbean; that’s
probably the only blessing they had,” Sanger said of those early
explorers. “Back in the day, they used pine on the hulls of the ships as
a preservative, so they would have been covered in pine tar. They all
slept out on the main deck, because down below deck you had all your
provisions, including the livestock.”

The Pinta, a modern-day replica of one of the ships used during
Columbus' 1492 journey across the Atltanic Ocean, is on display now
through Jan. 2 at the Brooks Bridge Marina on Okaloosa Island.
The Pinta will be available for self-guided tours from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
daily through Jan. 2, when it will head to Pensacola for its next stop.
Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors and $6 for children ages
5-16. Guided tours can be booked for a reduced rate of $5 per person
with groups of 15 people or more. Guided tours can be made by visiting
the website at website https://www.ninapinta.org/.