One watched helplessly as her husband drowned. Another was clinging to the hope of seeing his cousins in Hialeah. The third could only pray.

Three exhausted and dehydrated Cuban refugees were spotted bobbing on inner tubes in rough waters just off Lauderdale-by-the-Sea early Thursday afternoon. As rescue and news helicopters hovered overhead, Good Samaritans and rescue workers ventured into the water to pull two of them onto the beach one block north of Commercial Boulevard.

The third was plucked out of the water by Coast Guard rescuers about a mile farther north.

The three were all that was left of a group of eight who set off from Jibacoa, Cuba seven days earlier on a makeshift raft of inner tubes roped together, with very little food and not nearly enough water.

"They were on devices that weren't intended for the ocean," said Coast Guard Lt. Tony Russell. "It was an absolute miracle that the three who survived did."

Their journey turned tragic less than two days after they set off for Florida.

"My husband was the first to die," said Milena Isabel Gonzalez Martinez, 37, the only woman in the group. "He drowned. So many of them drowned right in front of me."

Gonzalez and the other survivors, William Villavicencio Perez and Carlos Bringier Hernandez, were admitted to Holy Cross Hospital in critical but stable condition Thursday. Each spoke briefly from hospital beds, in Spanish, with reporters.

Gonzalez lamented that the group accidentally left 21 gallons of fresh water on the shore when they left Jibacoa, near Havana. They ran out days ago.

"The weather was bad the whole time," said Bringier, the most talkative of the three. Waves were between six and nine feet in the Florida Straits over the past week, according to the National Weather Service. Bringier said eight people were on the raft when he went to sleep on the second night. When he woke up, two of them were gone.

"I didn't say anything," Bringier said. "All I could do was pray."

Bringier, whose 13 previous attempts to escape from Cuba were unsuccessful, said he last saw his wife and children on March 18, when he told them he was going to buy a pack of cigarettes. Now he said he wants to help them join him in the United States.

Wednesday night, the six remaining people could see the lights of South Florida in the distance. Bringier, Villavicencio and a third man decided to make an aggressive push to reach land. Gonzalez and the remaining two men were too ill for the attempt, so the six broke into two groups of three, according to what the survivors told Broward Sheriff's Office detectives.

During the night, the two men who stayed behind with Gonzalez drowned, she told a Spanish-speaking Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue paramedic.

People on the Commercial Boulevard fishing pier called the Coast Guard Thursday shortly before noon, after spotting Bringier and Villavicencio floating on inner tubes.

Two tourists waited for them to get close enough, then went into the water and pulled Villavicencio to shore.

"I saw him and thought, I can't just sit here and watch them struggle," said Greg D'Amico, 40, of Knoxville, Tenn., who pulled him out of the water with the help of Mike Randazzo, 46, of Rochester, N.Y. "His feet were pruned. His skin was peeling off. His eyes were open but he seemed lifeless. But when we got him on shore he began to show more signs of life. His eyes opened and it almost looked like he breathed a sigh of relief."

Randazzo described the refugee as sunburned and blistered.

Lillian Garcia, 33, who works at the nearby Villas by the Sea hotel, said Villavicencio was disoriented, repeatedly asking, "Where am I?" and asking for food.

Later, in the hospital, he was still parched and had difficulty speaking. He asked for two cousins, by name, and said they live in Hialeah.

Rescue workers pulled Bringier to shore and he was handcuffed while hotel workers brought blankets for the refugees.

A battered Gonzalez was spotted minutes later lying on what was left of the inner-tube raft. "She was very fatigued," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Joe Kimball, who was aboard the helicopter that spotted Gonzalez. "She couldn't stand by herself."

Although Coast Guard rescuers pulled her out before she made it to shore, immigration lawyers believe neither she nor her two friends will be forced to return to Cuba.

Tammy Fox-Isicoff, an immigration lawyer in Miami, said the U.S. immigration policy regarding Cubans says any migrant taken to a hospital for medical treatment is considered "dry-foot" and permitted to stay in the country along with Cuban refugees who reach land. The policy is commonly referred to as "wet-foot, dry-foot," and refugees who don't make it to land are usually sent back to Cuba.

Rescuers searched all day for the third man who broke off on his own, but he remained unaccounted for and was presumed to have drowned, sheriff's office spokesman Hugh Graf said.

Elizardo Sanchez, who heads a nongovernmental human rights organization in Cuba, said Gonzalez and Villavicencio were politically active in Cuba.

"They were from small dissident groups," he said. "They weren't dissidents for a long time, but they were active."

Staff writers Jaime Hernandez and Vanessa Bauza contributed to this report.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4207.

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