Otis tore down the walls of large buildings. It made the houses shake. He struck down Parotas and Ceibas. And this happened on land, where people sheltering in closets cannot forget its sound. Marlon Valdez is a 24-year-old sailor who was on a boat in Acapulco Bay when the Category Five hurricane hit, the maximum on the Saffir-Simpson scale. He looked after his boss’s yacht. There were hundreds like him in the main port of Guerrero. Nothing remains of everything that was there. He doesn’t know the exact number, maybe there were 200 or more, 400. In his sector alone, in the so-called Aguada, there were around 40 boats. There were at least two people in each of them. After the hurricane, there are many who have not been heard from.
Marlon’s story is the story of a town that gave up everything to turn to tourism. Valdez studied marketing at university but couldn’t find a job that would allow him to live off his studies, so he went to the port thanks to a friend. He worked there for four months for free to learn. He was 22 years old when he received his sea record, the passport that allows sailors to find work in any port in the world.
The yacht he worked on was rented for three to five hours for a party, event or excursion. It circled the bay and anchored for tourists to swim. Marlon is responsible for the safety of everything, but also for the preparation of drinks and meals, as tips are an important part of his salary. Finding a turtle or dolphin became an important part of his salary.
Since he started sailing, Marlon has had to sail boats many times. He says it is a common practice in the industry: “It is a matter of course, that is, it is not a matter of whether you want it or not.” “You as a sailor have the duty and responsibility to take care of your boat to take care of it and go down with it.” It can only be seen when it storms. That’s why owners instruct their crew to stay on the boats to take care of them and prevent them from breaking down or colliding with others. There is usually no extra payment for the sleepless night you spend protecting other people’s valuable property.
Early on the morning of October 24th, Marlon and his partner received dinner for looking after a 42-foot yacht: a kilo of shepherd’s meat was the payment for the surviving Otis.
During the interview, he uses parentheses to explain the technical terms, admits that he has some flashbacks from shock, and that he is still missing fragments of that morning. At night they come back to him in nightmares. He is calm and says that at least he doesn’t cry anymore when he tells it. This is the incredible story of the sailor who managed to survive and save his companion during the hurricane that devastated one of Mexico’s largest cities.
View of the marina in the port of Acapulco, on Friday. Monica González Islas
The calls
Since it rained all day on Tuesday, the yacht had no tourists that afternoon. The owner hired Marlon, who is normally a sailor, to become captain and take care of one of his boats. He was accompanied by a 19-year-old boy who helped him. They arrived on the yacht accompanied by some sacks of potatoes, food and water for the night. Everyone in the port knew about the warnings. “We knew it would be pretty tough, but we were supposedly ‘prepared’ for something like this,” says the sailor ironically.
At 11:30 at night the wind began to increase. He did everything that was planned: he placed fenders – the balloons that absorb the blows of other boats – around the yacht, he turned on the engines, he started moving forward – accelerations – so that the ropes, together held the yacht with the anchor, held the sails. The yacht company didn’t want to collapse. They put on their vests. “When I was 12, I saw that everything was no longer in our hands,” he says resignedly. The ends gradually began to come apart. “As the boat moved forward, I reached the other end of the bay in 15 minutes and because of the hurricane it didn’t even move.” The wind began to carry other boats, one of them collided with his. They fractured the hull and the break on the starboard side caused water to enter.
He first asked for help: “There was no one on the radio who could help, I radioed the navy, I radioed the port captain, they were the same.” They also had dead people. The fact that the sea never forgives anyone, not even boats as big as the ones they have. So I suspect they are also protecting themselves from all the relaxation that the hurricane caused.”
The yacht sank with Marlon and his sailor on board. He called twice, the first to the boat’s owner: “I warned him that he couldn’t save his boat. He told me to hold on and cut the ropes of the ships that hit us. He said to me: “If you see that you can’t do it anymore, jump, but please hold on.” That was it and I said “ok, done”. He did what the boss asked, it didn’t help. Then he called his mother: “I told her, ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine, I’ll tell you after a while,’ and that was it.” “I was already sinking.”
Sailor Marlon Valdez and his mother Ivonne Villagómez in Acapulco on Saturday. Monica González Islas
At that moment, Marlon’s partner began to cry. “I had to calm him down because if not, he was useless to me, he was in my way. At first it calmed him down, then I thought you had to wait until a certain point to jump. Because when the ship sinks, it pulls you, it sucks you dry, so we jumped when there was a little bit nothing left.” They jumped and the hurricane continued. “It was still 12:30 p.m., I went down very early.”
The 10 meters
“Everything looked white, you couldn’t see where I was going. You could see debris, you could see diesel, the diesel glows colorfully in the water. So we were swimming in diesel debris, well, swimming because we couldn’t even swim. “You don’t have the body to swim against the current.” The goal was to persevere. During the 40 minutes they were at the mercy of the hurricane, they even saw part of a pier pass by. A piece of wood pierced his partner’s arm. “The only thing I told him was to cover your neck and breathe as much air as possible because the waves were sinking us, they were rolling us over. “I told him, hold on to something that floats.”
Then Marlon heard the engines of a boat turn on. He explains that you can hear the sound better underwater. It was about 10 meters away, they had to swim. How do you swim 10 meters during a hurricane? Marlon arrived with his partner, who was bleeding to death and could no longer swim. “So my goal was to get there with him, it was always to get there with him, because when we got into it I told him, ‘If you want to die, then I won’t, take care of me ‘Cause I will do it.’ Take care of yourself.'” He arrived and grabbed a broken rope from the boat. He started screaming.
“At that moment I thought they weren’t going to engage – engaging means moving the machines, because when they engage the propeller, which is like a fan, it can grab you – so I didn’t let go of him, but I also let go couldn’t get rid of the rope and tried to climb up. Then I saw that someone was there and just shouted: “Don’t hold on and help!” until the man came out and helped me put my sailor on.”
The man was not a crew member of that boat, but was able to jump up when his sailboat began to sink. The three remained sheltered there for the next few hours, they were now closer to the club and other boats were blocking the wind. When it was all over, he looked for a first aid kit for his partner, water and food. Even with a flashlight he could see everything that moved. Nobody understood how they got there.
First thing in the morning he went to the yacht club and saw everything destroyed. He had to look for his best friend, who was also guarding another boat. They sent him to identify the first seven bodies they recovered. “They were people I knew and had said hello to hours before, but they weren’t my friends, so I tried to move on.”
The return
Marlon walked the first part of the way home barefoot. In Acapulco, according to Otis, only buildings were destroyed, trees, poles and signs were torn down. An apocalyptic panorama complemented by looting. “I grabbed some flip flops, I couldn’t afford to loot a place after I almost died.” And followed.
During this time, his mother, Ivonne Villagómez, had taken the same route, but in reverse order, to look for him. “I just wanted him to come over so I could look for him. I clung to the window all night and asked God not to save me, but to save him,” says the excited woman. “When he called me, I could tell by his voice that he was scared, he didn’t tell me, but he is my son and I know him. We are like Muégano, we are both alone, I am divorced,” she emphasizes. “He later told me that telling him he was going to be OK helped him move on.”
That morning, as Marlon walked through the rubble of a destroyed city, his friend arrived at his mother’s house. “He came on a motorbike and told me that Marlon was fine and that he had survived. I told him, ‘Boy, don’t lie to me.'” When Marlon took him to his mother’s house, he came to this building in the neighborhood in downtown Acapulco. “Everyone was waiting for me,” says the excited boy.
Aerial photo shows damage to the yacht club, three days after Hurricane Otis. Monica González Islas
The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has reported 43 dead and 36 missing after the hurricane. Everything on the Acapulco coast was destroyed. “At this point there is nothing. The entire yacht club, the entire marina, the Marina Santa Lucía, the Marina Puerto Marqués, the performance, where the boats can dock, the aguada where they anchor… There is nothing there,” says Marlon Valdez. The party ships disappeared, the Acarey sank and the Bonanza ran ashore and destroyed all the other ships.
“In a way I feel helpless because I can’t help others because that was my job. As a sailor, I save lives, I help people at sea,” says the young man and recalls: “The fact that next to me, for example, there was a sailboat and the children who looked after it were 17 or 18 years old and shouted at me to help them. I feel helpless because I told them I couldn’t help them because it was them or me. There are many people who I don’t know whether they are alive or not.”
Subscribe here Subscribe to the EL PAÍS México newsletter and receive all the important information on current events in this country