Columbus Day Sailing Sail Away Girl Hello Sailors, Hard to believe it s time for the Columbus Day holiday already. In previous years sailing events, including BBQ sails, were scheduled on this holiday in Chicago. While it wasn t blazing hot, they were beautiful sailing days. This year?? We already had snow flurries in Chicago and so many of the sailboats are already tucked away for the winter. Where did sailing season go? Columbus Day: In honor of Christopher Columbus who sailed the oceans blue in 1492, I am sharing a bit of trivia that you may not have known. So here we go:
1. Christopher Columbus is believed to have been born between August 25 and October 31, 1451. 2. Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy and his given name was Cristoforo Colombo. 3. Christopher Columbus began a career as a seafarer at the age of fourteen and later supported himself by selling maps and charts. 4. Christopher Columbus believed that Asia would be 2,400 miles west. In fact, 10,000 nautical miles lay between Europe and Asia. 5. Christopher Columbus first went to King John of Portugal with his idea to find a westward sea passage to Asia but after months of waiting, the answer was no thank you. 6. Queen Isabella s response to Columbus s idea was that his price was to high and that he wanted too many ships. 7. If he in fact reached the Indies, Christopher Columbus was asking for a title, a coat or arms and one tenth of all profits for Spain. 8. It took Queen Isabella six years to agree. Christopher Columbus, having given up, was four miles out of town when the Queen s courier caught up with him and shared the news. 9. It wasn t easy to get the money or the ships, but it was even harder to find a crew. Many people still believed that the earth was flat and that at some point a ship would hit a waterfall and fall off of the side of the earth. 10. A royal decree on April 30, 1492 ordered the suspension of judicial proceedings against criminals that agreed to sail with Christopher Columbus. Even so, only four prisoners took advantage of this offer. 11. Christopher Columbus s first voyage with the Nina, Pinta
and the Santa Maria began on August 3, 1492. On October 12, 1492 a sailor on the Pinta shouted Tierra! or Land! 12. Christopher Columbus and his crew were actually seeing the island of San Salvador, 375 miles off of the coast of Florida. 13. Columbus discovered (for the Europeans) many of the Caribbean Islands, South America and Central America. 14. On Christmas Eve Christopher Columbus allowed an experienced boy to steer the Santa Maria and later that night the ship crashed onto a reef near Hispaniola. Only the Nina and Pinta would return to Spain. 15. Even though he made three return trips west, Christopher Columbus never actually stepped foot on the mainland of North America. 16. Spain celebrates Columbus first landing in the Americas on 12th October. In the US we celebrate it on the second Monday in October. 17. All portraits of Christopher Columbus were painted postmortem so no one knows exactly what Christopher Columbus looked like.
18. These are the lines to a poem written to help children remember the year that Columbus discovered America. I actually did not know that there were two more lines to the poem. In fourteen-hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He had three ships and left from Spain, He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain. 19. When returning to Spain, Columbus with the two remaining ships, The Nina and Pinta, encountered a fierce storm on February 14, 1493. The two ships were separated as they headed for the Azores to provision and make any necessary repairs before completing their return to Spain. Columbus waited on the Island of Santa Maria in the Azores for two days in hopes of reuniting with the Nina. When she did not appear, Columbus charted his course for Lisbon, Portugal. He arrived there on March 4, 1493, rested overnight and then set off to the Port of Palos, Spain the next day. Ironically, the Pinta showed up a few hours later after she had missed the
Azores completely, landed at the Port of Bayonna, Spain, made repairs and then set off for Port of Palos arriving just a few hours after Columbus. 20. Here s a short mini-biography video on Columbus. Enjoy! Hope you have a wonderful Columbus Day! See you on the water, Sail Away Girl