The family of 66-year-old Juan José Mutilba Obregón is living through agonizing days after he fell into the sea from his sailboat.
The 66-year-old was sailing with his wife aboard the vessel, which had departed from Sicily bound for Pylos in southwestern Greece. According to his family, he fell overboard on August 18 and has been missing ever since.
The woman aboard the sailboat was unable to stop the vessel and return to the spot where the 66-year-old had fallen. She remained at sea for days without adequate communications before eventually managing to alert the authorities.
What the 66-year-old’s son says
The 66-year-old’s son spoke exclusively to Live News, describing his family’s anguish. He provided answers to many of the questions raised in recent days, particularly those surrounding his mother’s actions.
“On Sunday of last week, I spoke with my parents about the fact that they would be leaving Syracuse, Italy, for Pylos, Greece. On Monday, around 7 a.m.”
“At 150 nautical miles, my father catches a tuna, cleans the tuna, and the blood that remains inside it. He takes a bucket and, while going to clean up this blood, my father falls overboard. My mother, because of the shock, doesn’t know how to react. Besides that, it is also true that the boat was quite unfamiliar to them. She didn’t know how to react, and within 30 seconds my father had disappeared.”
He added:
“From that point on, my mother took the exact coordinates of the spot where my father had fallen and tried to send an SOS over the radio. It appears that either the radio did not work properly, or the protocol was not followed correctly.”
He continued:
“The boat ran out of fuel because my mother didn’t know anything about mechanics, so she didn’t know how to turn off the engine or anything. She managed to take down one of the sails; she lowered the other about halfway to slow the boat down as much as possible. She wrote down the coordinates of where my father had fallen, which were immediately reported to Maritime Rescue. The only thing my mother wrote down were my father’s coordinates. Period. There is nothing else written down. My mother didn’t keep a journal. My mother didn’t write down how she felt. My mother isn’t crazy, she doesn’t take any medication.”
He described his father as an experienced sailor:
“My father has been sailing for more than 35 years. So my father was an extremely experienced man. My mother wasn’t.”
