Llaüt Cristina comes back to life

Lost and Found

Formentera, September 11, 2024

On the morning of last Tuesday, as I was heading to Es Ram just minutes before sunrise with the simple intention of recording a video, I never imagined what I was about to experience. When I arrived at the area where the llaüts are moored, my heart stopped.

There, in front of me, was the Cristina, the llaüt belonging to Xicu Moliner that sank on August 14. It was resting on the wooden rails of its dry dock. Incredible, almost impossible. I still can’t describe the mix of joy, astonishment, emotion, and gratitude that left me speechless at that very moment.

I was frozen, unable to continue speaking, words caught in my throat, choked by tears. That boat, which we thought lost to the depths of the sea since that fateful August 14, was now resting peacefully in front of me, spotless, as if the shipwreck had never happened.

The emotion was so overwhelming that I stopped the recording because I was crying like a child, unable to utter a word. This wasn’t a simple find by chance; it was something far beyond logic.

The call that sparked joy

Still in shock, I took out my phone and called Xicu Moliner. I knew that he, like almost all of us, considered it extremely difficult to recover his boat due to the challenges of finding it in such a vast area of sea.
At 7:36 in the morning, his voice on the other end of the phone was one of disbelief, from a man who couldn’t understand how his beloved Cristina had returned.

“Are you sure?” he asked before seeing the photos.

When he arrived at Es Ram a few minutes later, the sparkle and emotion in his eyes said it all, and we embraced each other through tears and laughter.
I immediately shared the photos of the boat in the WhatsApp group “Recerca Cristina,” a group that had been created to help Xicu after his shipwreck, made up of over 200 people.
The group exploded with messages of joy and astonishment at seeing Xicu smiling next to his beloved llaüt Cristina.

Nobody knows

What’s most perplexing about the llaüt Cristina’s return to life is the way it happened. There were no signs of who or how it was done, nor any prior news that would have alerted us. The boat appeared in perfect condition, with no apparent trace of the days it spent on the bottom of the sea.

The island’s media wanted answers to many questions: Who? How? When?

But the truth is that I don’t know, and I don’t know anyone who knows, the who, how, and when of this appearance of the llaüt Cristina at Es Ram on September 10, 2024.

All I know is that Formentera, the island where, when someone who needs and deserves it asks for help, the answer is always the same.
Xicu Moliner is a person who, throughout his life, has earned the esteem and affection of everyone who knows him.

In this case, undoubtedly, his friends came together just as they did on the day of his shipwreck, but this time shrouded in an even greater aura of mystery.
Yes, whoever it was chose to do it this way, and who are we to not respect that decision? Personally, I’m fine with it, not knowing their names. This way, I can thank everyone who has been part of the search efforts from the very beginning, regardless of the final outcome of their effort.

I’m sure that without teamwork, Cristina would still be at the bottom of the sea today, dreaming of a reunion.

Lost and Found

Before everything that has been described so far, on Thursday, September 5, I visited Xicu Moliner at his home in La Mola along with my good friend Pepe den Jai.
Sitting on the porch of his house, Xicu detailed the terrible moment of the shipwreck: how the hurricane-force wind appeared in seconds and Cristina capsized and sank within minutes.

He showed us with emotion the only piece of the llaüt he managed to save, a wooden fragment called a curter, which became his lifeline while saying a phrase that stuck with me: “Oh, Cristina… you left me alone.”
I don’t think I was the only one who shed a tear hearing those words.

That Thursday at noon, Xicu was wearing a t-shirt that initially seemed to have no particular relevance. But upon closer inspection, Pepe couldn’t help but point out the oddity of the message:

“LOST AND FOUND: It all comes in waves. We gotta learn to ride them.”

Intrigued, Pepe asked Xicu if the t-shirt had been a gift after the accident.
The response was puzzling: “No, I’ve had it for months, but I hadn’t worn it until today.”

Xicu doesn’t speak English, and when we translated the message for him, the room was filled with a strange sense of symbolism. It was as if the t-shirt itself was speaking to us: he had ridden the waves of his fate on August 14, when the storm threw him into the sea, but he was finally found thanks to his effort clinging to a piece of wood and the perseverance and determination of his friends.

What none of us three could have imagined that day was that, just as Xicu was rescued from the sea by his neighbors in Formentera, his beloved Cristina would share the same fate.
And that even though it was lost at the bottom of the sea, it would also be found, emerging from the depths as a message of hope, pride, and unity within the Formentera community.

A joy in capital letters wrapped in the mystery and anonymity of those who performed the second miracle in less than a month in the waters of Formentera.