A fundraising effort is underway to send the remains of two men who died in a Stamford boating accident on Easter back to their native country.

Cristofer Cifuentes, 25, and his uncle, Ludyn Cifuentes, were with two other relatives fishing off Shippan Point Sunday morning when things turned tragic.

Sharon Carmona, the wife of one of the victims, started a GoFundMe page where she wrote, "Sadly, the boat flipped over and hit my husband in the head; he could have saved his life, but he decided to save his brother's life with the remaining minutes he had."

"It was a windy day, and it was a small boat. Long Island Sound this time of year is very cold. It can be treacherous," said Stamford Fire Department Chief Trevor Roach, who responded to the incident after a relative called 911 to say she'd heard from them and they were "in distress. The boat was sinking."

Roach said emergency responders got the number for the phone aboard the boat.

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"We have a special system called Carbyne that they call back, and they take over the person's cellphone," Roach explained. "We see their GPS, and we can take over their camera and other things on the phone. So we got an instant location on where they were on the water."

Roach said boats with Stamford fire, Stamford police, Darien fire, and the U.S. Coast Guard responded.

"The boat was gone by the time we got there. The only thing sticking above the water were their heads and the ice box, and the ice box is what the Darien fire boat spotted," Roach told News 12.

He said two of the men two were in cardiac arrest when they were pulled from the water, while the other were semi-conscious. An update on how they were doing wasn't available Tuesday, but officials said Sunday they were in critical condition at the hospital.

"The two people who survived had life jackets on, and they were on properly. The other two -- I'm not sure of the state of their life jackets when they went in the water," Roach said. "But even with life jackets on this time of year, they were in the water 30-40 minutes. That's a long time for your body to be in that cold of water."