SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — Looking back, survivors say, the voyage seemed doomed from the start: The weather was bad and the clearly overloaded boat seemed barely seaworthy as it set out in the inky pre-dawn darkness in what was supposed to be a 36-hour journey to Puerto Rico.

Some passengers noted the fiberglass and wood along the side of the boat was coming apart even before they set off from the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. Luis Cortorreal, a 31-year-old house painter making the journey for the first time, said a few people pleaded with the captain to turn back as waves broke over the bow in a wind-driven rain.

They could still see the lights of the beach hotels along the Samana Peninsula. But it was already too late.

The boat broke apart in the waves, scattering more than 70 people into the sea. Men and women flailed in the water and fought to hold on to the boat’s aluminum fuel containers. Cortorreal, who was going to meet his brother in Puerto Rico in hopes of starting a new life, recalls panicked shrieks of desperation.

“Everyone was screaming but we were too far away,” he said as he recovered back in his hometown of Limon in northeastern Duarte province. “Nobody was going to hear us.”