Survivor of NYC boat tragedy that killed mom, baby slams captain: ‘It was too much weight’

A survivor of the deadly New York Harbor charter boat mishap that left a mom and her baby daughter dead revealed new harrowing details of the watery tragedy Monday — and slammed the skipper of the overloaded craft.

Jorge Ortiz, who was on the ill-fated boat when it capsized on Saturday night, told The Post that the captain, Manuel Hernandez, had allegedly informed the group that they didn’t need life jackets — and then didn’t lift a finger to help after his 13 passengers all plunged into the darkened waters.

“When I looked, he was over there on the top, sitting in the middle of the boat,” Ortiz recalled.

Meanwhile, several passengers desperately searched the waters for mom Sara Sanchez, 27, and her 5-month-old daughter, Antonella Garcia, but were unable to save them, Ortiz said.

The 2019 Yamaha motorboat chartered via a luxury tour company was packed with 14 people despite a listed capacity of no more than 10.

“It was too much weight… He should’ve known better,” Ortiz, 58, said about Hernandez.

“And then that little girl shouldn’t’ have been in the boat.”

Ortiz — whose wife Johana Cespedes also survived the $150-a-head “Zeus Luxury” charter to celebrate a friend’s birthday — said he was apprehensive about the cruise from the start after the passengers had to board off the rocks off Randall’s Island instead of a legitimate dock.

“It was weird that we were getting on from the side of Randall’s Island off a rock,” he said. “I’m like, if this is a boat that we’re paying for … the guy is charging money to to take us, why are we getting on through rocks?

“It was weird,” he said. “I even told my wife.”

Ortiz was on the cruise because his wife knew Paul Rivera, the passenger whose birthday was being celebrated, from their local church.

He said the ride started off fine, with a stop at a restaurant in New Jersey for dinner and a cruise around Liberty Island before they headed for home.

Ortiz said Sanchez was smiling and taking one final photo of her baby girl with the Statue of Liberty looming in the background when everything suddenly went wrong.

“I was actually looking at the baby with the mother,” he recalled. “And that’s when everything, the boat just went down from the front. And when the water started coming in, that’s the last thing I saw.

“And then, boom, it flipped upside down quickly,” he said. “It flipped front to back. The water came in, and then it just slammed down first, flipped it completely, completely, quickly.”

Panic gripped the passengers when they hit the water, with most of them not wearing life jackets, said Ortiz, adding that he immediately looked for his wife before a grim realization hit.

“Everybody’s going, ‘Where’s the baby?'” he remembered. “So, I tried to swim a little bit towards the bottom, but I couldn’t reach the bottom of the boat.”

After, they found out “she was under the boat.”

He said Hernandez allegedly climbed onto the hull of the overturned boat and did nothing to help the search.

The survivors were eventually rescued, first by another party boat and then the NYPD harbor patrol and several US Coast Guard vessels that plucked everyone to safety.

Hernandez, 46, was charged with more than a dozen counts of reckless endangerment after the mishap and was awaiting arraignment on more serious federal charges of misconduct and neglect resulting in death.

The Coast Guard is part of the investigation to determine if Hernandez was operating an illegal charter operation without required certification and safety requirements.