The 257.5 foot barque Guayas was built for the Ecuadorian Navy as a school ship in 1976. Her keel was laid down at Bilbao on June 1st of that year and she was launched on October 22nd the same year. Completed the next year she was delivered to the Ecuadorian Navy in July, 1977.

Guayas is attached to the Naval Superior School in Guayaquil founded by the country's Liberator Simon Bolivar. She is named after Ecuador's main river which runs by the city of Guayaquil.

Her complement is generally 87 crew and 63 cadets although that varies from voyage to voyage. The average age of cadets is about 21 years old and as for most Latin Countries, the ratio of crew to cadets is very high.

The Guayas looks a lot like her near sistership Gloria except for her open flying bridge instead of the covered wheelhouse. Another difference is the figurehead which, on Guayas, represents an Andean condor (similar to that seen on Esmeralda).

The first couple of years after her arrival in Ecuador, the Guayas sailed in the Eastern Pacific and in the Caribbean. She sailed back to Europe in 1980 joining the American Tall Ships Race at Cartagena, Venezuela, to Norfolk, Virginia, where she arrived first. In the next leg of the race from Boston to Kristiansand, Norway, she was third. From there she joined the Cutty Sark Tall Ship Races ending at Sail Amsterdam. She was the only Tall Ship to have taken part in the whole series from Cartegena through to Amsterdam.

Guayas also took part in the 1986 Op Sail in New York before sailing to Sydney Australia in 1987 for Australia's Bicentennial. In 1992 she attended the Columbus Regatta Tall Ship Race series marking the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the new world. She will take part in Op Sail 2000, and can be seen in ports such as New London, Ct.