Cecilio Adames met up with five friends Sunday morning at a dock in Howard Beach, Queens. The group planned to go fishing on a boat one of them owned.
It was not fishing season, and the air was a frigid 36 degrees, but Mr. Adames was “excited” to be going out in good company, his daughter Alisha Adames, 16, said.
Hours later, detectives knocked on the family’s door. The boat had capsized and Mr. Adames was at a Staten Island hospital, they said. When the family got there, the police said he was dead.
The 30-foot long Grady-White boat Mr. Adames and his friends were on had taken on water around noon on Sunday in the Ambrose Channel, the main shipping channel in and out of the Port of New York and New Jersey, the authorities said. The boat capsized about five miles southeast of Breezy Point, a private beach community in Queens.
The U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement that five people had been recovered from the boat and that four were unresponsive. The New York Police Department confirmed that at least three of those four had died. As of Monday morning two were still hospitalized, one in critical condition and the other listed as stable, a police spokeswoman said.
The sixth passenger was still missing Monday, and divers, boat crews and aircrews were searching the area, the Coast Guard said. The authorities identified the missing man as Vernon Glasford, 52.
Jenel Bobb, Mr. Glasford’s sister, said that she had spoken to her brother on the phone Saturday evening and that he had been looking forward to relaxing with his friends on the boat. He asked if she wanted to come along, but she declined because of how cold it would be. Ms. Bobb said Mr. Glasford had left for the marina early in the morning and his family had not heard from him again.
“It does not feel real,” she said. “If I see a body, then it is for real, but for now I don’t know.”
The Coast Guard was working with New York City’s fire and police departments to understand what caused the boat to capsize. The investigation was continuing Monday night.
Alisha Adames said that she almost fainted when she saw her father, who was known by his middle name, Javier, at Staten Island University Hospital on Sunday. He was lying lifeless in a hospital bed, she said, with the tube that had been used to drain water from his body still in his mouth.
“I’m not going to feel any better until I find out what happened,” she said.
Alisha said her family did not know what exactly transpired Sunday morning. She was supposed to go on the trip, as she often did, but had decided not to because of the cold.
Mr. Adames and a second man who was pulled from the water, Enrique Diaz, were airlifted to Staten Island University Hospital, and the other three people were taken to a Coast Guard station in Sandy Hook, N.J. Mr. Diaz was alive on Monday, according to a hospital spokeswoman. His condition was not immediately clear.
Sewchand Maniram, of Queens, was also on the boat and survived, according to his daughter, Asha Latchman. He was taken to a hospital in New Jersey and was recovering on Monday, but was “traumatized” by his near-death experience, she said.
Alisha Adames said the police at the Staten Island hospital had returned her father’s wallet and a few other personal belongings, including a silver ring with a blue stone that he always wore.
She said her father, who had taught her to pilot a boat, had been a boating and fishing fanatic, someone who was very comfortable in the water and who she never imagined would die at sea.
“I just went to his room and smelled his pillow,” she said while looking down at the silver ring, now on her finger. “I get the chills talking about him.”
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