Columbus ship replicas dock in Lake Charles

LAKE CHARLES, LA (KPLC) –

If you drive by the Lake today, you may notice two ships docked. The Nina and The Pinta, replicas of two of Christopher Columbus’s fleet of ships in 1492.

The ships sailed into port for their official arrival Thursday morning April 19.

“It was all done by hand tools, the same way it would have been built 500 years ago,” Captain of The Nina Kyle Friauf said about how the ship was built. The Pinta on the other hand was built using a bit more modern methods, but still a very good replica. The Pinta is also 10 to 12 feet larger than the original.

Friauf has been the captain of The Nina for 6 years, starting his journey as a crewmember.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to get an understanding for the type of difficulties and things they had to do to cross and discover a new world back and forth between the continents 500 years ago,” Friauf said.

Both ships are traveling museums sailing port to port and together both ships have sailed more than one million miles around North America.