Rezki Afriansyah was asleep on the upper deck of the Virgo Transport 8 ferry when his friends woke him in a panic around one o'clock Sunday morning.
The vessel was already listing about 30 degrees to port in the Java Sea, and he recalls seeing waves as high as four meters pounding the ship relentlessly.
"When I went through that door, I immediately fell against the ship's railing. I held on tight and hugged my friends, and then we were swept away by the waves," Afriansyah told Reuters reporters, describing the dramatic moment when disaster became reality within mere minutes. According to him, no alarm was activated to warn the hundreds of passengers sleeping in cabins and various areas of the ship.
In less than ten minutes, the ferry capsized completely into the churning waters off the Indonesian coast. Afriansyah and his friends found themselves about 15 meters from the sinking vessel, clinging to a floating gas canister and waiting in the towering waves for rescue that might never come.
They swam and floated for approximately 10 grueling hours until a passing ship spotted them by chance and managed to pull them aboard. Six people died in the disaster, while 129 others remain listed as missing in searches continuing under harsh weather conditions. The assumption is, tragically, that they too are among the dead.
The ferry departed Saturday afternoon from Surabaya bound for Banjarmasin on the island of Borneo with 234 people aboard. Afriansyah testified that the entire journey was accompanied by high waves, and concluded with sadness and red eyes: "I felt overwhelmed, exhausted, suffocated, and just accepted whatever would happen. I thought then that I was going to die, but I'm here."
