Rust slowly eats away at the German steel. No less than seven seagulls perch on its edges. The Kuenda won prizes in sailing competitions and crossed the Atlantic twice, but it has not sailed for 14 years.
When a Spanish fishing boat found it near the Malvinas Islands in May 2008, it made news for the Tierra del Fuego portals. The sailboat was empty, adrift since April 23. The stations of the Argentine Prefecture had alerted that afternoon of the prestigious vessel that was towed by the gale and the waves ten miles from the Islas de los Estados, halfway between southern Argentina and the Malvinas.
The owner, Alejandro Morand, was notified on May 14 that the Kuenda was on its way to the port of Montevideo. The Spanish fishing boat from the Lersol agency emptied the water that for three weeks had been climbing into the deserted facilities of the sailboat, and they transferred it to the port of Buceo to decide its fate.
Photo: Leonardo Carreno.
The Kuenda, the Argentine sailboat stranded in Montevideo since 2008
“We never knew who, but someone had been on the sailboat when it was at sea, and had taken things from inside, like a shelf,” recalled Javier Barros, director of the maritime agency that made the link with the Spanish fishing vessel. The 20-meter mainmast had broken almost in half, and the mizzen – the mast closest to the bow – had been lost in the cold southern waters..
When there is a discovery on the high seas, the lost ship becomes the property of whoever found it. The captain of the fishing boat and Morand negotiated the price. The Spaniards asked for 100 thousand euros, but the owner managed to leave it at 30 thousand. There, in the vicinity of the port of Buceo, a dozen meters from the shore, she remained anchored until today.
The sailboat was never abandoned, and his monthly payment as a “transient” has been up to date ever since, the Yacht Club of Uruguay, which manages the marina, reported. From time to time he receives a visit from Morand or Alberto Forgués, his contact in Montevideo. “I have the boat and I kept it at a very high cost for the prices of Argentina”, the owner himself told The Observer.
“I continue with the idea of recovering it. In fact, next month a friend is going to start repairs. I changed the motor a long time ago. The idea is to get some investor, sell a percentage of the ship, maybe 45%, and put it in order, ”he ventured. “An estimate that I have, without having seen the boat other than in photos, is that the restoration will cost about US$ 150,000”he calculated.
The Argentine, who is a surgeon, plans to carry out a “tourist project” based on charters from Cape Horn to Antarctica, a proposal for which he considers there are “many French and Italians interested”, and which would allow the recovery of all investment in a single season.
Photo: Leonardo Carreno.
The Kuenda, the Argentine sailboat stranded in Montevideo since 2008
Far from the crowded docks of the port of Buceo, the sailboat has been anchored for 14 years. Gustavo Coll remembers having seen him sail when he was a child, long before he became Commodore of the Yacht Club, a responsibility that culminated a few months ago. “The Río de la Plata is very small. When you live your whole life in this, the boats do not go unnoticed, and that sailboat never went unnoticed in the Río de la Plata”, pointed out the former director.
“It is a beautiful ship, with beautiful lines that, unfortunately, is in an advanced state of disrepair. She is a very well designed sailboat, and her two-masted rig makes her very versatile for ocean riding,” she reviewed. “It’s a pain,” she lamented.
it was news
Arturo Acevedo, owner of the Argentine steel company Acindar, spared no cost when making the Kuenda more than 50 years ago. “For an owner of Argentine steel to import German steel, imagine”Morand joked. The Kuenda has been defined as “a pioneer of its kind”, due to the keel and daggerboard system, with a draft of more than three meters below the surface.
The sailboat had left on April 19, 2008 from Cape Horn to Aguirre Bay, the eastern end of Tierra del Fuego. On board were three crew members, including the owner.
Without expecting it, the incident would motivate months later a documentary broadcast by the channel buccaneer tv. That April 19 was an “exceptional sunny day”, as the owner himself recounted for that report. The plan was to wait for good weather in Bahía Aguirre before setting sail for the Strait of Le Maire., which connects the south of Argentina with the Isla de los Estados. The idea of the crew was to spend a week in the place.
Suddenly some thunderclouds announced the gale. Morand was “cooking something” in the sailboat’s interior galley when a strong gust entangled a line in an engine propeller, causing it to lose propulsion and stall.
In that stormy drift, unable to maneuver easily and waiting for the storm to abate to set a final course, they stayed until April 22. That day, according to Morand’s account, a watershed occurred.
“Gabriel (one of the crew members) was already entering into reactions close to panic. (…) He refused to go to the Malvinas and, at 9:30 on Tuesday morning, in a situation that really got out of control , yells at me that I was considering only my ship. Seeing a person completely out of his mind and about to panic, my judgment as a doctor prevailed. There I really feared for my life; not because the boat was not in condition, but because, when a person panics, you never know what can happen ”, he stated.
Morand opened the communication channels, and declared an emergency. The rescue was made by the Ushuaia ship, the Centurión del Atlántico, while the waves hit the shells of both vessels, accentuating and shrinking the height between one and the other by six meters with each attack. The inclement weather forced him to tie a harness before jumping onto the ladder that the Centurion of the Atlantic stretched out on his side.
The ship had had to lower around 15 tons of its oil cargo before launching into the maneuver. From the Centurion they had already warned Morand that towing the sailboat would be an arduous task. The sailors tied the Kuenda, but the storm soon made the moorings loose. “They followed him to see if the intensity of the wind dropped, but it was impossible. At night they gave up. That was the last time I saw him, before seeing him back in Montevideo,” said the owner.
Almost three weeks he was adrift. The Prefecture passed the alert. On May 6, it was seen 255 nautical miles east of the city of Río Gallegos. A few days later, a Spanish fishing boat ran into him on his voyage, near the Malvinas. The fractured sailboat would soon disembark in Buceo, where she continues to wait for an uncertain future.
