On the ship, before leaving, Chaves' colleague, jokingly, said to him, you need to have a team, I'm going to give you a Flamengo shirt, look there, take that.

The other one made a joke about the shirt, saying, "I'm going to use this but to clean the floor, it must be good for something."

And they embarked.

And there goes the ship on the high seas, very high seas, it seems, because suddenly a storm arose. They were approaching the coast of Colombia, and wave after wave, another storm arose in the midst of the storm: a disagreement between the captain and his subordinate, who, enraged, left his post unguarded. There could be no worse place for this fight. For in that region, it was said, every 60 years, there was a low tide, and then the submerged rocks would appear and the ships would run aground.

Well, the ship ran aground. Worse, it was ruined. It began to sink. Just like in the movies. It began to sink, to list, and there was a rush, longboats lowering, and the captain, even disqualified by the crisis, authorized this and that, maintaining the tradition of being the last to leave the ship.

Several longboats had already been launched, and as the last one, the captain's, was lowering, a problem arose: the vessel was half-listening, half-tilted, suspended on its side, and the ropes and cables were not working. Ultimately, the ship was about to sink with the longboat, its captain, and the last sailors.

It was then that Chaves, who had never supported any team and thought he was going to use his Flamengo jersey to mop floors, instinctively had a heroic and solitary outburst. He left the suspended longboat and, climbing the ropes, reached the ship again, and desperately began to fiddle with the cables until the longboat, untangled, dropped neatly into the water, setting sail immediately.

The captain and his sailors fled, and as the ship sank, Chaves was left alone above. He looked this way and that, then headed toward the remaining lifeboat, tossing it into the sea and then diving in.

Unfortunately, his companions on the other boats were already far away. He could no longer reach them. Drifting farther and farther away, he became lost. He was adrift at sea for 28 days.

Luckily, the boat had four survival kits, each one supposedly lasting 15 days. Even so, the food was already proving a bit unbearable by the second day. True, he had some gear, like a hook, which allowed him to vary his diet, a knife, and other items. In short, he had to make do by getting food from the sea as well. But brackish water isn't exactly pleasant.

And suddenly, his boat washed up on a Colombian beach. And as if everything had happened quickly, he found himself surrounded by a dozen men armed with machine guns, looking like Indians. He had arrived at one of the major drug ports. Those grim-faced men, upon seeing our character approaching alone on the raft, beat him up and, shouting "kill! kill! kill!", rehearsed his death.

He was about to die when one of the traffickers grabbed the castaway's backpack, shaking it fiercely, and spilled its contents onto the sand. A Flamengo shirt was unwrapped in the middle of it all. And as if before a sacred object, the Indian traffickers began to jump and shout:

ZICO!

SKIN!

ZICO!

SKIN!

Everything turned into a party, a gathering. And the Flamengo shirt that was supposed to be used to clean the floor became a talisman in Chaves's life forever.

() State of Minas and Correio Braziliense, 13.07.08.