In a matter of minutes, Ferdinand Puentes and eight other people went from sitting in an airplane to being in the ocean about a half-mile from Molokai.

"It was pretty cold," Puentes, of Ewa Beach, recalled Thursday.

He said he also wondered whether air rescue crews were aware of the crash.

The Makani Kai Air plane, en route from Kalaupapa to Honolulu Airport, made a "pop and bang" less than two minutes into the flight, lost engine power and made a forced landing in the ocean Dec. 11, with survivors struggling to keep afloat, he said.

In the air, Puentes said, he thought he was going to die, but pilot Clyde Kawasaki glided the aircraft in for a hard landing.

State Health Director Loretta Fuddy managed to get out of the plane but died in the water of her injuries. Kawasaki and two passengers were seriously injured, and five passengers received minor injuries.

The Coast Guard and Maui County fire rescue workers picked up the passengers about 80 minutes later, the preliminary report said.

Puentes, 39, who had gone to Kalaupapa to patch the roof of a church and do other construction work, said he was weighed down by his steel-toed boots and construction clothes.

At times he was able to also hold a waterproof video camera on a stick to record the aftermath of the crash.

Initially, he said, he was on a wing of the airplane, helping one of the women put on her life vest, but as the plane sank, he realized he hadn’t put on his vest and struggled to get it on while keeping afloat.

Kawasaki, who was bleeding from the forehead from hitting it on the instrument panel, gave up his flotation seat to Puentes.

"He’s a hero," Puentes said.

Puentes said that in the strong current, the group became split up into about three groups, and he and another man tried to swim for shore.

He said he never saw Fuddy in the ocean.

Puentes, who dives for recreation, thought he could make the swim but found himself struggling in the strong, cold currents. Also, his shoulder was injured and bruised in the landing, he said.

He said he kept his clothes on because he anticipated he might have to cross a reef and thought the clothes would help him from being cut by the coral.

He said that about 10 minutes after the crash, an airplane flew over and indicated it was aware they needed help.

"That gave us hope," he said.

He said the swimming left him exhausted and that as he rested, floating in the ocean, he thought of his children.

He said that at one point he thought the worst and wanted to cry, but the airplane kept flying over them and soon a helicopter hovered over part of the group.

A rescue swimmer from the Coast Guard helicopter used a basket connected to a line to pluck people from the ocean and eventually pulled him from the ocean.

Puentes said he continues to have nightmares of the crash and at first had difficulty sleeping more than a couple of hours.

He said he has received counseling and is sleeping longer but still is seeing a counselor for post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological condition similar to what soldiers go through when they have near-death experiences.

"I’m still in trauma from all this," he said.

As part of his way to get through PTSD and his fear of flying, he arranged to visit Kalaupapa on an airplane Wednesday, and riding with him was Kawasaki.

"I guess he found out about it and wanted to come along," Puentes said.

Puentes said sharing the photographs about the experience at sea and writing about his experience on Facebook is his way of getting over the experience.

"It’s helped me heal a lot better," he said. "I’m just moving forward."