Christina Lovitt, a boat captain on Maui, spends her time delivering food, medicine and other items to people on the neighboring island of Lanai, which doesn’t have the same resources as Maui, she told CNN on the phone Thursday.

But on Tuesday around sunset, as black smoke engulfed the sky around her, Lovitt watched as the boat she’d put “every penny” into burned on the water.

She, Lashawna Garnier and Lovitt’s wife, Emma Nelson, had been on a skiff, or a small, flat-bottomed boat, trying to help others get their own boats out of the harbor when a large wave flooded their motor, rendering it inoperable.

The consistent 70 to 80 mph wind gusts kept them from being able to anchor. Instead, they drifted and were eventually pulled onto a 120-foot boat Lovitt had actually captained in the past.

That boat had a generator, radio and water on board – but no food. Wind gusts had blown out the windows, so the women boarded them up with wood in an attempt to stall the smoke. That’s when the women, who are all captains, heard through the radio that the Coast Guard needed help finding survivors who’d had no choice but to jump into the ocean after being boxed out by flames.

When another passing boat lent them extra gas, the women were able to get back on the skiff and head out into the night to find survivors. They ended up rescuing a 5- and 6-year-old in the water and handing the children over to the Coast Guard.

“To see this beautiful thing I’ve spent my life on just disappear — it was just the most tragic thing,” Lovitt said of her boat that she watched burn in front of her eyes. “But we were able to save those kids.”

Through extremely low visibility due to the heavy smoke, the women searched for survivors until about 4 a.m. local time. They watched every boat in the harbor burn up and knew others were on the brink of explosion. Lovitt called the scene “toxic.”

“There were waves on fire,” she said.

After returning on the skiff to the larger boat, the women still hadn’t had food. The Coast Guard eventually found them and gave them popcorn. Another woman, who had been riding out the fires on her own boat, gave them their first real meal. 

At around 4:30 p.m. local time Wednesday, the women arrived at Kaanapali Beach after deciding they would travel seven miles north in their skiff to safety. There, they were able to come ashore and helped another boat unload humanitarian aid supplies. 

“We looked like refugees or something,” Lovitt said of the moment they finally returned to land. “It was like something out of a movie.”

CNN’s Caroll Alvarado contributed reporting.