On Friday, April 17, what started out as a pleasant outing for the Mora family of Sarteneja and visiting friends, turned into a nightmare when their boat overturned shortly after departure, throwing all 13 passengers into the sea, where they spent the next 24 hours fighting for their lives.
The unfortunate passengers were making a trip from Sarteneja, Corozal, to Xcalak, Mexico, in the Leany, a 23-foot- long skiff, which was carrying a single Yamaha 4-stroke motor.
At approximately 11:30 a.m., disaster struck. Reports are that the boat, which was overloaded, was hit by a huge wave. It overturned at Rocky Point, about 8 miles east of Sarteneja.
With only 7 lifejackets available for the 13 passengers, plastic bottles and gas containers were used as makeshift flotation devices. Some passengers clung to the rope at the bow of the boat.
When a call came from Xcalak on Friday evening that the group had not arrived, the worst was feared. By the early morning hours of Saturday, local Sarteneja fishermen, who were home after the close of the fishing season, intending to participate in their annual regatta, had begun a search in their boats.
By the time morning dawned on Saturday, word spread like wildfire that an entire traveling company was missing, and villagers began flocking to the seaside, some carrying blankets, others with containers of gasoline to help with the search effort.
By mid-morning, as many as 15 fishing boats were searching for the boat and its passengers. The search boats went out in a line, but were well spaced apart so they could comb the waters between Sarteneja and Xcalak methodically. They tracked the ocean current by following the line of sea foam created by the current.
The first search boat returned to Sarteneja at about 7:15 a.m., and hundreds who had anxiously gathered on the beach to await its return, ran to the dock. A woman and her daughter were brought back, the first of all 13 to be found alive!
By 11:30 a.m., about 24 hours after the ordeal began, all had been rescued by various Sarteneja fishermen. One of them, Luciano Canul, tells his story:
”I left at 2:30 in the morning, Saturday. I went out with a flashlight and a lamp. Because I already know a little of the sea, I already know the calculations, how to go to Xcalak, where they say they wanted to go, follow the same path. The sea was too rough.”
When he found some of the survivors of the accident, he says that they were “sunburned, and had already given up. They were in their last hours, the hour of death.”
Separate groups of survivors were rescued in the waters in between Belize and Mexico. Those with life jackets were carried by the current miles away, while some stayed with the boat, holding on to the rope on the bow; they sang and prayed throughout the night, and when some lost their grip, they were assisted by the other passengers.
Another fisherman, Indalecio Ortega, along with his son, Geovani, and Cesar Munoz and Marcelo Cruz, went on the last rescue operation. According to the father and son, the waves were 4 to 5 feet high. They went in a triangular path, following their instincts as fishermen. They headed southwest, going towards Corozal Town, a location quite far from the other groups of survivors.
Geovani says: “On seeing what looked like a black package, we thought it was something, so we approached with the skiff, and saw it was a lady and a little girl.”
The lady, Mrs. Adriana Mora, had no life jacket, but was clinging to a gas can and had a little girl stretched out over it. She had been gripping it so long that she had worn the skin off her knuckles. They pulled her and the little girl onto the boat.
“The lady we found, they only gave her an hour to an hour and a half for her to die. Her skin was white, and when we pulled her up into the boat, it turned purple quickly.”
Geovani also reported that she could not talk very much, and Indalecio thinks that her determination to save the child was what sustained her.
All 13 people were taken to the Sarteneja clinic. Mrs. Sandra Reyes, the village nurse, described them as being very weak, very cold and dehydrated. From there some were flown by British Army helicopter to the Corozal hospital and some to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. At press time, nine were still in the Corozal Hospital.
Thanks and praise are due to the dozens of brave, heroic fishermen, all of whose names we do not know, who searched at their own expense. Thirteen lives were reclaimed from the sea.