Hello!
I've been doing some research for a project management course I'm taking, and we are re-planning Columbus's voyage. I'm having some trouble figuring out a time estimate (weeks, months etc.) that it would take for a ship to make routine repairs after a voyage of 2 weeks, 4 months etc. Failing that, how long it would take such ships, which I've figured out were built caravel-style (If thats accurate), to be built. Since we can assume repairs take less than that at least. The ships we are looking at are two Carracks and a schooner, all with crews of 40-50. We have assumed the ships to all be less than 120 ft in length and the normal width we found of 20 - 30 ft. The sizes are not specified in the project description, bu the crew sizes are given as above, a few comparative google searches came up with the length and width.
I can clarify any part of the question or details as needed!
I am not sure if your project requires it, but for the general sake of historical accuracy, let's note that Columbus used two caravels (I guess what you call schooner) and only one carrack. It is generally accepted that the two caravels had 24 and 26 crew respectively, and the carrack (Satna Maria) about 40 people. Your size estimates are much greater then what is generally used, as caravels were probably around 50 feet and Carrack about 70 feet (all estimates). Basically Columbus ships were more modest of the ones Europe had.
Now to your question About build time, it is hard to say as shipbuilders of the time did not really keep any information about details of their job. It was a trade secret sort of. Portuguese even banned sales of caravels abroad. Anyway an old thread here/u/jschooltiger guesses:
they could all likely have been completed in a season, given the proper resources being available and the shipbuilders moderately skilled.
Regarding repair times, it is hard to estimate what is routine what not. From excerpts from Columbus journal here we can see he made repairs to Pinta (rudder) and Nina (changing sail rigconfiguration from lateen -triangle sail to redonda-square sail) on Canaries from 6th august to 2nd September (This link actually says the Pinta changed rigging, but all other sources I read say it is Nina)
From Portuguese perspective they would use any chance when they landed in safe locations for water and provisions to inspect the ship and make repairs needed. Repairs took few days for anything minor, but more common was couple of weeks or sometimes even more then a month for anything major, non routine like outer hull repair
Let's take a look to Portuguese 4th Indian armada in 1504, led by Vasco da Gama. The part of the Armada left Lisbon in February, stopped briefly in Brazil in March and then ships proceeded to round the Cape. The meeting place was predetermined to be Mozambique island where they waited for each other and made repairs. On the way one of the caravels sank, and the Portuguese decided to build a new one. Apparently they already carried prefabricated parts for construction of such a new caravel with plans to do so when they reach the Indian ocean. They assembled it from 10th June to late June when they set sail again, so something like 3 weeks. Other examples for ships making repairs range from few days to few weeks, depending on as you say travel time, storms and weather encountered, and damage extent
No doubt most of the highly skilled parts were done before hand in Portugal, so this is probably not indicative for total ship build time estimate, we can safely assume normal repairs would have been done in the same way (with prepared parts) and lower than that time. If the crew had to build parts themselves (and they usually had people who knew it) than it would extend for how much time it needs, but this is a non-routine repair and depands on what it needs repairing
Some sources: THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF CARAVELS: A Thesis by GEORGE ROBERT SCHWARZ (PDF)
Columbus Jorunal extracts (link)
[A Portuguese East Indiaman from the 1502–1503 Fleet of Vasco da Gama (article link)] (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1095-9270.12175/full)