Boat acquired by the Generation of Centennial who had as representative figure Fidel Castro and that would happen to conform the 26th of July Movement. The yacht was bought from a U.S. company and was used for the transfer of 82 expedition members of that movement to the Cuban coasts to begin the revolutionary struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, Raúl Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos and Juan Almeida, were among the young people who would travel to the island on that yacht.
The yacht reached the eastern coasts of Cuba on December 2, 1956 near Las Coloradas beach and marked the beginning of the guerrilla struggles, which culminated in the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959.
At present it is exhibited in the Granma Memorial attached to the Museum of the Revolution in Havana.
The yacht was built in 1943, made of wood and oil motor with a single deck, no mast, inclined bow and straight stern. The original name of the vessel was Granma, registered in the port of Tuxpan, with the objective of sailing at high altitudes and being used as recreational traffic or trips to spend weekends at sea.
Its directive signal was X.C.G.E, the hull was made of wood, its length of 13.25 meters, a beam of 4.76 meters, a prop of 2.40 meters, gross tonnage of 54.88, net tonnage of 39.23, two Gray GM engines and a power of 225 c/c.
After a few minutes of the first hour of November 25, 1956 it began to sail stealthily by the still waters of Tuxpan river; it had to circumvent the surveillance of the lighthouse and a naval post of the existing Mexican navy in the exit to the open sea.
In the early morning of the 28th they entered the Caribbean Sea and in the early morning of the 29th they were ordered to prepare for combat, as two suspicious ships were approaching; however, they were two fishing boats that kept going.
At a mangrove point called Los Cayuelos, two kilometers from Las Coloradas beach -which is where they should have gone down-, the Granma ran aground, which forced the landing to take place earlier. It was 06:50 hours on December 2, 1956.
The Granma was occupied by the dictatorship’s naval units and taken to Havana Bay, where it remained until the end of the Liberation War. On February 6, 1959, just over a month after the triumph of the Revolution, the Havana Bay Trade and Industry Association proposed that the yacht be restored and preserved in a museum. On the 24th during a naval and aerial magazine in homage to the resumption of Cuba’s wars of independence, Prime Minister Fidel Castro entered the port of Havana aboard the Granma.
Today the original yacht is exhibited in the Granma Memorial, located in front of the south door of the Revolution Museum.