Two more would-be asylum seekers have died on the ocean trying to get to Australia while their 46 shipmates survived a boat journey that contained equal parts tragedy and luck.

The survivors, among them five children under six years old, endured 10 days without power, food or fresh water before they were spotted by an Border Protection Command plane and rescued by a cargo ship.

Benyamin Saber (centre), 28, with some of the other 46 Iranian asylum seekers at the hotel in Merak, Indonesia, where they are being detained after being rescued 110 nautical miles off Christmas Island. Credit:Michael Bachelard

But two days before the rescue, two men, Sajad and Meisam, had decided to paddle out to look for help. They constructed a raft from empty fuel containers and spare wood, and their paddle was a length of timber from the boat. They were never seen again.

''They had family in Iran,'' Benyamin Saber, one of the survivors, tells Fairfax Media as his wife, Maryam, sobs.