When I have not written for a while, it seems so very difficult to settle back into writing again.  At the end of last week, reconstructions of the Pinta and Niña came to Hudson, Wisconsin on the St. Croix.  They will be there until the end of next weekend.  We went to see them.  The Niña is the size of the original but the Pinta is a little larger than the original.  I do not know about you but I think of them as large, substantial ships.  It was quite an eyeopener to see how small and fragile they look.  The major question on our minds was, "Would we sail into the unknown on the open sea in one of them?"  The original seamen had to be extremely brave or extremely foolhardy. 

The Niña is the slightly smaller one.

The Niña

The ships are black because they have been coated with pine tar as the originals would have been.  This is on the Pinta and is one of the boats that would have been used to take crew to land. 

Theater legend indicates that sailors between sailings were frequently employed as stagehands.  This would explain why backstage pinrails look like this.