September 04, 2004
Kalmar Nyckel
On a run out to Stonington I had a bit of a surprise as I crossed the bridge – docked at the river side park was a circa 1600 Pinnace, complete with beautiful blue sides. I quickly took care of business in Stonington and returned to take Johann and Tammy down to the ship. I didn’t see anything in the paper about any special events involving ships this weekend so I wasn’t sure it would still be there. We have often enough had unique ships visit Mystic, but many of them tie up at the Mystic Seaport while others are only visiting for a few short hours.
Fortunately the ship, the Kalmar Nyckel arrived around 3pm, and is staying through Tuesday morning. The Mystic Chamber of Commerce has paid the fees to make the ship available to the public for free dockside tours. It appears they will also be having some short tour sails (for a small fee) just as the Argia and Mystic Whaler here do. It turns out the Kalmar Nyckel is from Wilmington, Delaware. A 1998 reconstruction of the original 1625 vessel that sailed from Sweden to Delaware (then New Sweden) four times starting in 1638. She is a Dutch design, a 200 tonne Pinnace, built to historical specs. The original carried 17 guns including 3 and 6 pounders. The modern recreation has a pair of 6 pounders and a pair of 3 pounders on board, which are fully operative. The crew says the captain likes to see how many house and car alarms he can set off when they are fired (blanks only of course).
Johann loved the tour, especially when he got to ring the ships bell and push one of the winches. We may end up going back down again tomorrow or Monday for another tour. Hopefully when they return to Mystic (with luck next year) we will be able to go out on a 3 hour or sunset cruise with them. It is something we plan to do with the Argia and Mystic Whaler but I think it would be special to sail aboard a 1600’s design ship as well.