According to villagers, John Long's boat sailed itself all night before crashing onto the beach, a ghost ship with all its lights on. They were afraid to approach because of the giant waves rolling in off the Pacific, but in the morning, when the tide went out, they found gold rings and bracelets in the sand and American dollars everywhere, the beach littered with riches. They said they found keys made of pure gold—ancient sailors' keys for opening chests.

Everyone gathered, until eventually there were nearly 100 people standing on the beach, worried that a family might still be trapped inside the hull. Perhaps it was not a ghost ship at all but a ship of death.

Local fishermen said they found the body near the mouth of the Río Cahoacán—a white corpse as large as two men, with no clothes and a light beard, mouth open as if it might speak. Villagers went to find the judge, because he was the only one with a phone, and he called officials from larger towns to come take the body away. This village was only a few palapas made of sticks and bamboo, with palm-frond roofs.

It was like a story from Gabriel García Márquez: the carnivalesque scene on the beach. The sea that brings gifts of the First World, conquistadors, and death. This body floating naked and larger than life—John Long, literally a big man, now become legend. But this tale is real. It happened in February in the village of La Cigüeña, on the west coast of Chiapas, seven miles from Mexico's border with Guatemala. Long, a 78-year-old Irishman who'd spent his adult life in California, had dreamed of this voyage for 16 years. He'd left San Francisco three months earlier on his 48-foot ketch, Cúlin, heading south to the Panama Canal and then home to his native Ireland.

Long's EPIRB, or emergency position-indicating radio beacon, went off at 12:49 A.M. on February 2. And contrary to all the colorful stories from the villagers, with their invention of gold and claims of finding the body, the Mexican navy actually discovered Long's corpse around 11 A.M. the next morning, floating two miles offshore near the town of Puerto Madero, seven miles north of La Cigüeña. His body was naked and bruised, with cerebral hemor­rhaging, broken ribs, and a broken neck.

Long's story was disappearing even as it was happening, and soon legend would be all that was left. I know this because his story is a version of what could have been my own. Ten years ago, I ran into trouble in these same waters.