A survivor from the ferry that capsized off Indonesia's Java island described the vessel going down in under five minutes, as rescuers continued searching for dozens of people still missing three days after the disaster.
The Virgo Transport 8 was sailing from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Banjarmasin on Borneo when it lost contact with its operator shortly after departure on Saturday.
It capsized early on Sunday during what should have been a 20-hour crossing of some 510km. Rescuers found the vessel inverted nearly 150km from the Banjarmasin port.
Rizky Apriansyah, a waiter working onboard, said he was sleeping on the ferry's top deck when his friends woke him at around 1am and told him to grab a life jacket. By this time, he said, the ship was already listing at around 30 degrees. He and four of his friends rushed from their room as waves he estimated at 3-4m high repeatedly struck the vessel, tipping it further.
There was no alarm and he feared that many passengers might not have known what was happening.
"When I went out that door, I immediately fell onto the ship's railing. I held on and hugged my friends, then we were swept away by the waves," he told Reuters. "It only took minutes for the ship to capsize, even less than 10 minutes."
Mr Apriansyah and his friends clung to a floating 12kg cooking gas cylinder around 15m from the ship as they watched it overturn, before drifting at sea for about 10 hours until another vessel spotted and rescued them.
Separately, five crew members survived by holding onto an empty LPG cylinder, according to the local news agency Antara.
Mr Apriansyah, who worked on the ferry for three months, said he did not intend to work at sea again.
"I felt overwhelmed, exhausted, suffocated, and just accepted whatever will happen," he said.
The ferry's operator, Virgo Karya Shipping, said that it could not comment on why the alarm was not sounded, saying it needed to check with the crew.
Six people died and 129 remained missing as of Tuesday, according to the Indonesian search and rescue agency Basarnas, figures that hadn’t changed since Sunday. Some 234 people were aboard, according to Reuters. Antara put the figure at 243 and said 114 had been rescued by Tuesday night.
Bad weather delayed the evacuation of 22 survivors by a day before they were brought ashore in Banjarmasin on Tuesday.
“The plan was to evacuate them to the Trisakti port yesterday but adverse weather conditions prevented us from doing so," I Putu Sudayana, head of the local search and rescue agency, told reporters. "We cannot fight nature; the swells and waves in the area were extremely high."
Four more bodies were airlifted to Banjarmasin on Tuesday, Basarnas said.
Nearly 1,100 rescuers, including navy and police personnel, are involved in the search, supported by more than a dozen vessels and five aircraft, according to Basarnas.
Mohammad Syafii, the head of Basarnas, said search teams were alternating their methods daily to adjust to shifting currents in the Java Sea and improve the chances of finding victims who might have been swept away, while continuing to treat the area in and around the wreck itself as the priority.
He said the agency followed international protocols throughout its operations and was subject to annual audits by the International Maritime Organisation.
“What we do strictly refers to legal grounds that can be accounted for," he said, urging the families of the victims and the public to rely on Basarnas for credible updates on the search.
Marine accidents are a regular occurrence in Indonesia, an archipelago of over 17,000 islands that relies heavily on boat travel for daily transport and tourism. Lax safety standards and unpredictable weather are the main causes.
