David Dietz and Eric Humphreys were about 250 miles north of Bermuda when the wall of water hit.

They estimated the swell was 50 feet. Dietz said the winds sounded like "screaming banshees.'' The two sailors did the best they could to keep the 30-foot sloop on course, but the waves swirling around them were like mountains.

The wave hit them on the port side, rolling the sloop completely over and snapping off the mast.

"I saw a big wall of water and I didn't have time to hold onto anything,'' said Dietz, who was in the cargo hold. "It was like the gates of hell opening up.'' The storm last Monday crippled the vessel, the Glou Glou , and began a harrowing five-day ordeal at sea that ended on Saturday when they were rescued by the Norfolk-based Aegis cruiser Thomas S. Gates .

When the Gates pulled alongside its berth at Norfolk Naval base yesterday afternoon, sailors were greeted by family and friends toting signs and balloons. Dietz, 32, and Humphreys, 24, dressed in foul weather gear and shorts, were greeted by TV cameras and reporters anxious to hear their tale of a harrowing five days at sea.

"It was a trip for certain,'' Dietz said.

The two men were sailing the newly-built sloop from Nantucket, Massachusetts, to the French West Indies to deliver it to its owner when the seas began to churn.

The men sailed through the first two-thirds of the storm when a wave hit them on the port side, rolling the sloop over 360 degrees and snapping off the mast.

"I was under water from my chest up, but down to my feet, I was dry,'' he said.

With the mast floating nearby, still connected to the boat by the rigging, Dietz said he scrambled on deck as fast as he could and began to cut the cables free. Otherwise, he said, the mast might have punched a hole in the boat and sunk it.

The men said they didn't have time to think about what had just happened.

"When it gets bad, it's time to go to work,'' Dietz said. "If you don't keep your head and do what you need to do, you're going to die.'' Dietz directed Humphreys to work on the engine while he cut the mast free.

Once the engine sputtered back to life, the two men again headed toward Bermuda. At one point, Dietz said, the boat began taking on water from holes that were punched into the deck by debris during the storm.

With enough fuel to motor to Bermuda, they bailed out the boat twice and had made it about 30 miles when the shaft on the engine snapped.

At that point, Dietz realised the only alternative was to hoist sail. The mainsail had been torn during the storm, so Dietz pulled out the spinnaker and gerry-rigged it as the mainsail.

Two hundred miles and four days later, the pair thought they were home free.

As the sun set on Saturday, they could see the lights of Bermuda shining 25 miles in the distance.

Having survived engine trouble and the storm, they were sure they could make it to dry land.

But just miles from the safety of Bermuda, the seas began building again, the wind shifted and the boat began drifting north.

And that, Humphreys said, is when they started to worry.

"You could see the lights, and then you started floating away. I thought it was game over at this point,'' Humphreys said.

But a distress signal the men had set off days earlier was picked up by the carrier John F. Kennedy , leading to their rescue by the Thomas S. Gates . The Gates was headed back to Norfolk from a six-month Mediterranean deployment with the John F. Kennedy battle group.

The carrier signalled the Gates , which was about 25 miles from Bermuda and about 20 miles west of the sloop. Meanwhile, Dietz said, a commercial airliner flew over the sloop and the men began firing the last of their flares, with the hope of being spotted.

"Shortly after that, we saw (the Gates ),'' Dietz said.

The Gates took them aboard on Saturday afternoon.

As the two men sat in the office aboard the Gates yesterday afternoon, neither seemed shaken as they joked about the ordeal. Both said their first priority was to hop on board an airplane and head home to Nantucket.

"I think I'm moving to Arizona after this,'' joked Humphreys, a bearded boat builder who said the excursion was his first time offshore.

But for Dietz, who runs a day charter boat off Nantucket and delivers boats, the experience brought back memories.

In June 1996, Dietz was racing a 31-foot trimaran from Newport, Rhode Island, to Plymouth, England alone when his luck took a downturn.

Dietz was about 700 miles southeast of Cape Cod when the boat's mast came crashing down during a storm. His distress signal was intercepted by the Coast Guard and he was picked up and put on board a cargo ship bound for Norway.

Dietz, who said he made his first trans-Atlantic trip when he was 19, said this was the first time a boat he had sailed had ever capsized.

Though the boat is probably still floating somewhere off the coast of Bermuda, the only salvageable items aboard are the engine and the life raft, he said.

Dietz said he was apprehensive about calling the Glou Glou 's owner with the bad news.

"He was very happy he didn't come with us,'' Dietz said. "He asked us if we ate all the foie gras.''