Missing Australians rescued but search for Indonesian man Fifan Marongo continues

They recounted how they had approached their extraordinary ordeal.

“There were some moments out there where we were all quite nervous and didn’t quite know what the outcome was going to be. But we just banded together,” Foote said. “I couldn’t have been happier having these three with me.

“They’re all so strong and every single moment they just knew what to do. We just kind of took charge and followed each other. There were no arguments ever. We were just strong as a unit.”

Weisse, 31, also offered thanks to those involved in saving their lives.

“It’s insane the effort that went out,” she said. “We feel so blessed and so loved. I’m beyond words right now. What we went through and experienced was so intense. But we were so proud of ourselves, how we just didn’t give up until the last moment.”

As they recuperated at the surf retreat they had booked on Pinang Island, with eight other friends to celebrate Foote’s 30th birthday, more details of their misadventure and the plight of Marongo emerged.

In an interview with this masthead, Akhmad, 36, said the boat had been hit by waves of at least four metres and when water began to leak in, they grabbed surfboards and put life jackets on and leapt into the water.

“We floated that [first] night together. It was raining, I didn’t have water with me, so I used my shirt and hat to capture the rain,” he said. “We hoped when the weather calmed down, we could hop back inside and take the water out.”

But when morning came on Monday, the boat was gone, so they began to paddle west towards Haloban, which by the position of the sun they estimated would be the closest island. By then, Marongo was tiring. The group last saw him about 11am that day.

“He was on one of the surf bags [with several boards in it], so it was like a mini raft,” said Akhmad after being reunited with his wife, Nazariah, and their three-year-old daughter, Sunrise Aprilia Khadijah. “I told him to just rest and [that he] did not need to paddle with the rest of us. [I told him] just let the current take him [east] … we will continue to paddle, and we will look for him once we get help.

“He said, ‘I am hungry, I am tired.’ That was the last thing he said before he drifted away. I caught small crabs and asked him to eat them, but he refused to eat them. We all did our best. The foreigners shared food and water with Fifan, we gave him extra life jackets. I tied the extra life jacket to his legs to improve his chances to survive.”

The capsized boat was spotted by a privately chartered plane on Tuesday.

Akhmad said the weather had been fine when they set out from North Nias for the three-hour journey to Pinang with a second, larger boat which had the other eight Australians in the tour partyon board.

When the storm arrived, the smaller boat pressed on while the bigger vessel took shelter behind another island. “We should’ve done the same,” Akhmad said. “The captain should’ve decided to wait the weather out [near the island of] Sarang Alu, too.”

In another video on social media, Foote described the moment waves slammed into the wooden boat on Sunday night.

“When the first one came in, Jordie’s like ‘All right guys, this could be serious’,” he said.

“I was like ‘All right, sweet, grab me that, grab me something warm, grab me my knife, grab me this.’ We all started grabbing shit.”

As the boat began to fill with water, Foote told them: “Everybody get the f— out now”.

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“I jumped out, grabbed Steph, pulled her out. She had a life jacket,” he said.

“Then Will dived out, Jordie ran to the front of the boat. The boat started going like this [tilting] and Jordie’s reaching for board bags. I’m going ‘get the board bags, get the board bags’.

“Me and Will climbed back up onto the front, and we’re all ripping board bags out, as many as we could.”

While there are grave fears for Marongo, Tonggor Gultom, an official in Nias with Basarnas, the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency, said they continued to hold out hope of finding him alive.

“Obviously, we hope he is safe, maybe stranded on one of the islands,” he said.

“We predict that he is washed to the western side of Sumatra, probably the waters of Aceh Singkil and Sibolga, and we are focusing our search operations there today.”