7 boaters survive 20 hours in Fla. waters; 1 dead

MARATHON, Fla. (AP) - October 10, 2011

An 80-year-old woman who was with the group, Zaida San Jurjo Gonzalez of Hialeah, is missing and presumed drowned.

Three other women on board told rescuers they didn't have time to grab life jackets for anyone except the girl when two waves suddenly flipped the boat off Long Key in choppy, rainy waters Saturday afternoon, Seaman Kendra Graves said.

Gonzalez's son, Jorge Alejo Gonzalez of Royal Palm Beach, and two other men on board tried to help her, but she went under the water within minutes of the 22-foot-long boat capsizing, said Florida Fish and Wildlife Spokesman Robert Dube.

"He could not hold onto his mother and she went under," Dube said.

State wildlife officials identified the other men as Jorge Gonzalez's uncle, Jose Miguel De Armas, and his sister's boyfriend, Juglar Riveras.

The boaters quickly drifted apart. The men held onto the boat. The three women and the girl - Jorge Gonzalez's sister, Elena; his wife, Tomasa Torres Gonzalez; and his uncle's wife, Yunisleidy Lima Tejada, and their daughter Fabiana - hanging on to the cooler.

A commercial fisherman spotted the capsized boat Sunday morning, Dube said, and rescued the men clinging to its bow. The women and girl were soon picked up by the Coast Guard, several miles from where the boat had capsized.

The group of women started waving and yelling for help when they saw the Coast Guard vessel, Graves said.

"They were hanging onto the cooler. It was afloat but its main purpose was to keep them together," Graves said.

Once aboard, the women asked about the men.

"They wanted to know, `Where are our husbands?"' Graves said.

All the boaters were family members who had left Layton, in the Middle Keys, to go fishing early Saturday, Dube said. The women said they had been fishing from their anchored boat about 3.5 miles off the Middle Keys when the boat flipped.

The Coast Guard met the commercial fishing boat to bring the men ashore for medical attention. The boaters were wrapped in blankets and treated for shock and hypothermia.

"They were all pretty happy to see each other," Graves said.

It wasn't clear if the boaters were aware of a small craft advisory that had been posted early Saturday warning of wind speeds of 23-38 mph and seas 7 feet or higher as torrential rains poured over the Keys and South Florida.

"They shouldn't have been out there," Dube said. "It was nasty from the get-go."

The conditions improved by early Sunday, and while spending long hours in choppy water would have been difficult, the warm waters off the Keys were survivable, said Bill South, senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Key West.