Survivor of capsized Dominican fishing boat recalls terror in Atlantic

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) -- Fisherman Jose Enrique Tejada clung to a gas container in the moonlit Atlantic and prayed for help after giant waves capsized the boat he was on, throwing him and dozens of other men into the ocean.

Some began swimming toward lights on shore 20 miles away, but Tejada and his nephew floated toward two men who had found a piece of driftwood. They waited for rescuers.

The sun rose. A plane droned overhead and the men frantically waved at it. But there was no sign of rescue as the sun set. The four men fell into despair.

After nightfall, they heard the clatter of a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter. Its searchlight found them, starkly illuminating them against the black ocean.

"I just believed in God and I told him, 'God, you are not going to let us die,"' Tejada, 33, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday from a hospital in the northern province of Puerto Plata.

The 52-foot Abra Cadabra, carrying at least 34 people, had been traveling to a fishing bank in rough seas when it sank off northern Dominican Republic in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday.

By Thursday afternoon, rescue crews plucked 19 people from the water. The U.S. Coast Guard was still searching for the others, said Lt. Cmdr. Chris O'Neil, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami. No bodies have been found.

Some could have been trapped inside the sinking ship, Tejada said. He said there was panic after a 10-feet wave slammed into the vessel.

"We're going to tip over! We're going to tip over!" he recalled someone shouting.

Tejada said the Coast Guard helicopter lowered a ladder, but he had to be lifted on a stretcher because the skin on his arms and torso was blistered from fuel from the boat's leaking tank.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)