All Lisa Agate can remember is a big bang, and then moving to see what happened.
That one movement probably saved her life.
Miss Agate (23), a Dunedin woman, suffered facial and hand injuries when the boat in which she was travelling, Shikari, collided with a 91-tonne moored ex-Navy patrol vessel, Flightless, at Waikawa Bay, near Picton, about 4pm on Friday.
Two men died in the collision.
Another two were flown to Wellington Hospital in a critical condition.
Miss Agate, when spoken to by the Otago Daily Times at Wairau Hospital yesterday, said she remembered very little of the accident.
She was standing at the back of the 7m aluminium boat with one of the men who died when the collision occurred.
"I can remember this big bang. I swung around to see what happened and ended up crashing through an open doorway," she said.
"I cut my hand but I don't know how. By moving, I got in the position to move into the doorway."
She was knocked out for about 10 minutes.
She regained consciousness with blood pouring from her arm.
"I was just trying to put my jersey on top of my arm to stop the bleeding. I could not move to help the others."
She suffered a fractured right cheekbone, cut tendons and broken bones in her left hand.
"I just had to lie there and wait. I don't know how long I sat there."
Miss Agate, who has been working as a diver for 10 months at a King Salmon fish farm in Queen Charlotte Sound, near Picton, said it seemed to be a completely normal 20-minute journey.
The day was sunny and calm, and the boat was about five minutes away from land when the accident occurred.
Police are not speculating on why the accident occurred.
Transport Accident Investigation Commission investigators visited the scene on Saturday and police will continue investigating the accident this week.
Miss Agate said the boat was travelling at a moderate pace, although she did not know the exact speed.
Blenheim men Anton Lewis Perano (38) and Troy Anthony Climo (38) were killed in the accident.
Maurice Alfred Liberona (48) and Kane Craig Aitken (23), also of Blenheim, were flown to Wellington Hospital on Friday and remain in a critical condition.
Another passenger, Juan Carlos Vargas (32), of Blenheim, was released from Blenheim's Wairau Hospital on Friday night.
Former Otago Girls High School pupil Miss Agate works week on, week off at the farm, and usually returns to Dunedin during time off.
She hopes to be out of hospital some time this week, and to return to Dunedin.
She plans to keep working at the salmon farm despite the incident.
Her parents, Eric and Cindy Boock, of Dunedin, were telephoned by Blenheim police on Friday night and rushed to her bedside.
Mrs Boock said: "It was just something you couldn't believe. But she should be out of hospital this week."
