SANTA ANA — Five Orange County and three Austrailian surfers were hoping for the adventure of a lifetime when they set sail on an iconic charter boat, Quest 1, for a two-week surfing trip off the coast of the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia in 2015.

But on July 18, 2015, in the middle of the night, the Quest 1 sank in high seas about 30 miles from land, leaving the group of eight men clinging to a life raft and surfboards, as the captain and crew panicked and abandoned ship, according to a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court.

The surfers say they floated for hours in the darkness, battling seasickness and rough waves in the Indian Ocean, before they flagged down another boat and were rescued.

The eight men are now suing surf giant Rip Curl, which organized the excursion, alleging the company knew the vessel was in disrepair and failed to provide any aid or assistance after they were rescued. The lawsuit, filed last month, also names Rip Curl executives and the boat’s operators, PT Neptune Adventures, which is described in the suit as a “shell” company set up by Rip Curl to “avoid liability and circumvent regulatory compliance” for the Quest 1.

Rip Curl is a major Australian-based surf wear and gear company with U.S. headquarters in Costa Mesa. A representative could not be reached for comment Monday, May 8.

The lawsuit says Orange County residents Jay Lewis and Shawn MacLachlan planned the trip for mid-July 2015, finding six other avid surfers and paying more than $30,000 to charter the Quest 1, described as a 21-meter, legendary surf vessel that has been featured in classic surf movies.

After a day of surfing, MacLachlan awoke at about 2:30 a.m. July 18 to a hot cabin. The crew was rushing about in the darkness and the engine room was three-feet deep in seawater as the anti-flooding equipment had apparently failed, the lawsuit says.

The panicked captain had “barricaded himself in the wheelhouse and was observed repeatedly yelling English obscenities into the radio,” the suit says. MacLachlan, meanwhile, woke up the other passengers and the group began bailing water from the engine room before realizing their efforts were futile.

The captain fled on a Jet Ski just before 4 a.m., “abandoning his passengers, crew and sinking ship,” the lawsuit says.

“Chaos ensued,” the lawsuit says. “The masseuse panicked and jumped onto the Jet Ski with the captain. The remaining crew was incapable of launching the life rafts and fled to launch the motorized tender boat. The tender quickly became overloaded as the crew transferred on and cast themselves off from the Quest 1.”

The passengers scrambled on to a single floating life raft, the suit says, and for the next several hours they floated in “complete darkness and rough seas.”

At dawn, they saw the Quest 1 completely disappear into the ocean, the suit says.

“By 7:30 a.m., the passengers observed that there were neither rescue vessels in sight nor any search aircraft overhead,” according to the suit. “Despite their knowledge of the vessel’s emergency, the defendants had apparently taken no action whatsoever to notify the Indonesian coast guard or any other local or regional rescue resources.”

While the surfers were on their boards or in the liferaft, the remaining crew members in the tender boat apparently stayed behind. The suit says that MacLachlan and two of the remaining crew members set off in search of help and found another charter boat, the Foxy Lady, which retrieved the others.

News outlets, including Surfer Magazine and the Daily Telegraph in Australia, reported on the Quest 1’s sinking.

The lawsuit charges that Rip Curl provided a faulty vessel with improper safety equipment and an incompetent captain and crew. The lawsuit says the defendants used insurance money to purchase another vessel, which they have since put into service.

The plaintiffs – MacLachlan, Lewis, Peter Nevins, Nathan Haeger, Jeffrey Denson, Matthew Smart, Matthew Learmonth and Luke Doyle – are seeking an unspecified amount in damages.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, Joseph Walsh, said his law firm was approached by the passengers to help them after they had been stranded at sea when the vessel unexpectedly sank.

“The passengers aboard the Quest 1 were very lucky to have survived their ordeal,” Walsh said in a statement. “Their subsequent attempts to contact the vessel’s representatives have been repeatedly ignored. Our goal is to ensure that they are properly compensated for their injuries and losses and to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”