TO FRAY BENTOS AND BEYOND.
Chris & Angie Coham 1998 Contest 44S
Yes it is the Fray Bentos of corned beef fame. How do you get there? First sail down the North Atlantic across the equator and on down the South Atlantic to the River Plate. Then sail up the River Plate for 200 miles and then a further 150 miles up the River Uruguay and Fray Bentos is on the starboard side of the river.
Angie and I had a head start as we were already in Buenos Aries in Argentina. As we were leaving Argentina and going to Uruguay we had to go through the formalities of clearing out. This is one of the drawbacks of South America as all the countries love paperwork and we have to usually clear with the Police, Customs and Port Control.
However once that was done we left and set sail across the River Plate towards the Uruguay side of the river. At this point the river is only 35 miles wide as we were 180 miles inland, but the entire river it is very shallow, 3 to 4 metres deep apart from the dredged channels. There are also numerous wrecks such as the Graf Spee to make life interesting.
Not long after setting off we were sailing very fast in a thunder storm with lots of wind, luckily from astern. We sailed most of the day in quite fresh conditions and made good progress sailing from buoy to buoy as we followed the channel. Once we were well into the River Uruguay the buoyage became more interesting as they were widely spaced and poorly painted, so it was difficult to determine port from starboard.
It was also complicated as South America uses IALA B which reverses the system we are used to in the UK. Also the top marks were often missing or badly bent from contact with passing ships.
As it was too far to reach Fray Bentos in one day, we anchored out of the channel for the night. Not long after we had anchored a small tanker passed and gave us a wave and hoot, very friendly, it also proved that we were well out of the channel and would get a peaceful night. We were off early in the morning, motoring as\the wind was very light. The river was gradually getting narrower but was still over a mile wide, the depth varied from 4 to 10 metres as long as we kept in the channel. By mid afternoon we rounded a bend and there was Fray Bentos on the starboard side of the river. The town was dominated by the building as large as a power station that had been the meat processing factory. It has a large jetty all of which is in a very dilapidated state. We anchored off the Yacht Club and the next day we visited the factory.
The factory is now a museum but only the office is available to view as the rest of the buildings are unsafe to enter. The office was incredible as all the records and equipment were there just as they had been left when the factory closed 25 years ago.
The factory was started by a German chemist in the 1880's to manufacture meat extracts like Oxo, Bovril and tinned meat. It became the Anglo Uruguay Meat Company and expanded into all sorts of meat products and fresh meat much of which was exported to the UK either frozen or tinned. In its peak it employed 2000 staff and processed 4000 animals per day. Our guide showed us round the outside of the factory and we saw where the animals had entered the factory on their way to becoming corned beef or other meat products. It would have been very interesting to have been allowed to see the inside but no money had been spent on the upkeep of the buildings and they are now falling down and are unsafe. As we had enjoyed the trip so far we decided to continue and try to reach Paysandu which was about another 90 miles up the River Uruguay. There is a hydro-electric dam which would stop us from going any further. The wind was again light so we motored all day, there were plenty of birds to watch and as the depth was reducing it was not dull. We stopped for the night in a small creek at the river side, very peaceful with no mosquitoes. The next morning we motored on and apart from a very shallow patch, which we had to sound our way through there were no problems and we reached Paysandu in the afternoon. Even though we were now over 400 miles from the sea, there was a very active yacht club who made us most welcome. As we were somewhat larger than the club boats we had to moor alongside their quay. The club secretary told us that we were the first English boat to visit their club, so we presented them with a Royal Lym. burgee. This is now proudly displayed in their clubhouse.
Whilst we were at Paysandu we wanted to hire a car. As Uruguay is a very poor county cars were not freely available. We got a taxi to take us to the only car hire company to find that their one car was already on hire. After much very fast Spanish between the taxi driver and his base we were taken to his office where the meter was removed and we were given the taxi to self drive. It was very interesting to drive a yellow and black taxi and we were only flagged down twice. The roads in Uruguay are very empty which makes for easy driving and we saw a lots of interesting sights such as Gauchos on horseback and Roadrunners (beep beep) running by the side of the road.
After two days touring in the car we returned to the boat to find that the river level had dropped and that we were hard aground. As the river drains a huge area of South America the level can be affected by rainfall hundreds of miles away. However we were told that the level would rise on Monday morning when electricity demand would be high and there would be a high water flow from the dam. This was correct so we duly left on "high electricity" and not high tide! As the level was much higher than when we had come up river we had an uneventful trip back to Buenos Aries.
For the technically minded we used an Argentine chart portfolio for the River Plate and the River Uruguay backed up with C Map electronic charts. Once inland the electronic charts were more detailed than the paper. As long as the datum was adjusted the electronic charts were very accurate.
Chris Coham “ Fearless of Lymington” 21.08.2006
