Replica San Salvador Ship Nears Completion

Katie Schoolov

Katie Schoolov
Down one of San Diego ‘s most iconic trails, at the point of Point Loma, there ‘s a tall stone statue looking out over the Pacific. Every year, about a million people from all over the worldly concern yield him a sojourn, even though many of them do n’t know who he is. “ He ‘s a man of mystery, ” said Cabrillo National Monument park commando Debbie Sherman. “ No one truly knows much about him. ” That man is Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. In September 1542, the internet explorer sailed into what ‘s immediately San Diego Bay, aboard his 200-ton spanish Galleon, the San Salvador. He claimed the land below where his statue now stands at the Cabrillo National Monument for Spain, becoming the first base european to set foot on the West Coast .

Fast-forward closely 500 years, and the San Diego Maritime Museum is re-launching a reconstruction of his embark. Sherman said the ship will boost Cabrillo ‘s name recognition and help oneself educate the public about California ‘s history. “ It ‘s going to be the new ambassador to San Diego, and everybody ‘s going to know who Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo is now, ” Sherman said .

Katie Schoolov
People are shown visiting the Cabrillo National Monument where Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo’s statue gazes out over the Pacific, April 10, 2015.

construction started on the big wooden vessel in April 2011. Research and planning went on for three years before that. “ At one point we thought it would take us two years to build, but it ‘s been a long clock time since we ‘ve believed that, ” said Ray Ashley, president and CEO of the Maritime Museum. Despite the delays, the San Salvador is nowadays about 96 percentage dispatch, Ashley said. “ The long we take to build it, the more people get to see it, ” Ashley said. “ Building it like this, where the public can see it, it ‘s been like this theatrical performance that ‘s been unfolding over the death four years. ” Ashley estimates that 1.2 million people came to visit the ship while it was being built at spanish Landing Park along Harbor Drive over the last four years. Every weekday, a murder of volunteers and six or seven paid shipwrights have been working on the ship. “ It ’ s a bucket tilt caper, ” said shipwright Don Davis. “ I barely walked around the boat and looked up and went, ‘ I actually built that. ‘ I ’ ve never built anything like that in my life. not quite like this. It ’ s a spanish Galleon. ” Davis, 72, drives 130 miles each day from Fallbrook to work on the San Salvador. “ Granted it ’ s not the actual ship, but it ’ s ampere authentic as you can get. It ’ s the real number McCoy, ” Davis said. “ I ’ m sure this is going to wind up in movies, educational programs and that sort of thing. ”

The reconstruct San Salvador will star in a new orientation film for the Cabrillo National Monument. The ship will need to be sailing by the Fall, when they ‘re planning to film in the Channel Islands. There ‘s still work to be done on the inner workings of the ship, but the outside is pretty much complete. Davis and his colleagues have built the ship about wholly of wood and other materials that would have been available in the sixteenth century. It ‘ll be 92 feet long and consider about 230 tons when it ‘s finished .

Katie Schoolov
San Diego Maritime Museum president and CEO Ray Ashley at the San Salvador construction site, April 10, 2015.

Katie Schoolov
Volunteers help remove scaffolding from the Sn Salvador at Spanish Landing Park, April 10, 2015.

Katie Schoolov
A painting by Richard DeRosset depicting the San Salvador when she sailed into San Diego Bay in 1542, on display at the Cabrillo National Monument, April 10, 2015.

“ I don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate flush look at this as a replica, ” Davis said. “ We built this thing the same way the Spanish would have built it back in 1542. We used some better tools – if they would ’ ve had the tools they would ’ ve used them excessively, but they didn ’ thymine. But we besides don ’ t have 300 guys working on the boat like they did. ” The original San Salvador was built in 1539 on the Pacific coast of Mexico, and Cabrillo used slaves to get the job done cursorily. today, an estimated 400 volunteers have given some 90,000 hours toward the construction. “ Being able to walk on a embark that ’ s the closest thing we ’ ve always had to the vessel Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego on is a dream, ” said Sherry Lorch, who has been volunteering on the San Salvador for more than a year. “ In a direction, I think we ’ re all living out a dream, an venture. I think we ’ re all seekers. ” The work force is two-thirds volunteers, and Ashley said that ‘s made for slow progress because the day by day act of workers is unpredictable. But all that free tug has its benefits, excessively. The project is on budget at $ 6.2 million. Ashley said a late audit showed that if they ‘d paid for all the skilled volunteers and donate materials, the actual price of the San Salvador would have been $ 11 million. much of the cost has been paid for by secret donors and special fundraisers. A period costume gala back in September raised $ 191,000 and drew some special guests, like María Ángeles O’Donnell-Olson, the honorary consul of Spain in San Diego .

Katie Schoolov
The Maritime Museum held a period costume gala at the San Salvador construction site at Spanish Landing Park on September 27, 2014. The party, which they called a Fandango, raised $191,000 for the reconstruction project.

Katie Schoolov
A homemade “launch planner” dial pokes fun at the many different options the Maritime Museum has considered for launching the San Salvador, at Spanish Landing Park on April 10, 2015.

“ I think that this is vitamin a important as the East Coast and the arrival of the Mayflower, ” O’Donnell-Olson said. “ There is not only one way to look at history, and many unlike nations contributed to the qualification of this big state. ” Ashley echoed O’Donnell-Olson ‘s sentiments. “ In fact, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, on the San Salvador, sailed into San Diego Bay 78 years before any Pilgrims set eyes on Cape Cod, and 65 years before Jamestown, ” he said. “ We ’ d like to add another origin floor to the national narrative…and since this is the shape of that, this embark, it helps it. ” Once it ‘s seaworthy, the San Salvador will take kids on educational sail voyages up the California seashore. It will have enough bunks to take a full classroom of kids on nightlong trips. Pending Coast Guard approval, it will carry 49 passengers. When at it ‘s home port, it will be docked near the Maritime Museum ‘s other ships. For now, though, it ‘s still at it ‘s construction web site at spanish Landing Park. And you ‘ll need to wait until it ‘s in the urine to get up close to it again. The site has been closed to visitors since mid-april, when the San Salvador was scheduled to launch. But Ashley said launching the ship has been harder than they thought. “ If we had built the San Salvador in a shipyard that had slipways and cranes and locomotion lifts, our efforts to launch the ship would be fairly dim-witted, ” Ashley said. “ But as you can see, we built her in a parking draw in a parking lot. And therefore taking one of the most building complex and heavy objects that anyone could have built 500 years ago and moving it over the road to a launch item and making a public event out of it : that proved pretty unmanageable. ” Ashley said they immediately plan to launch the San Salvador by the end of May, without any public ostentation. Once it ‘s finally in the urine, the public will be able to watch as they put on eat up touches that can only be completed once she ‘s adrift, such as adding two miles of rig and raising the masts. then, once the San Salvador is actually complete, Ashley said they ‘ll hold a big public ceremony for the baptize. “ It ‘ll be just correct below that bosomy angular character : that ‘s what gets whacked, ” Ashley said, as he gazed up at the ship he dearly refers to as a “ 150 short ton Steinway Piano. ” He hopes that champagne bottle will hit the San Salvador by the end of this summer .

universe of the San Salvador