In August 2012 "Spiro" hit a sandbank as she left Mar del Plata and lost her sonar. This meant "Espora" had to make an unscheduled deployment to replace her in the Atlasur IX naval exercise off West Africa. "Espora" left home with unresolved problems in her generators, which became worse until she ended up in South Africa with three failed generators. The German manufacturers MTU refused to repair them without payment in advance since Argentina still owed them money for previous work, so "Espora" spent 73 days at Simonstown until the dispute was finally resolved and the repairs completed.