Rex Saunders says he prayed and repeatedly sang a hymn while awaiting rescue from a pan of ice off the northern tip of Newfoundland. (Natalie Kalata/CBC)

A fisherman who survived two nights in frigid temperatures on a pan of ice off northern Newfoundland said Wednesday he repeatedly sang a church hymn while he waited for rescue.

"Most I done was pray," said Rex Saunders, 66, who was found on Wednesday morning on an ice pan near where his small boat had sunk, not far from his home of St. Lunaire-Griquet, on Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula.

"That was the most I done. And sing the best I could … that gave me strength," Saunders told CBC News in an interview from hospital in St. Anthony, where he is being treated.

Saunders said he kept singing one hymn, Power and Prayer, while hoping crews would find him.

"I wore [it] right out," he said with a chuckle.

Saunders ran into trouble early Monday, when he was hunting seals for personal use. He was preparing to hunt his final seal of the day when his six-metre open boat struck ice.

"I ran up on a small pan, about twice the size of the boat … I looked back, and the gunwale was under the water," he said.

Saunders said he tried to balance his boat, but was unable to do so.

"I watched the water come to me. It didn't take very long. She didn't go long … until my face hit the water," he said with a chuckle.

The crew aboard Canadian Coast Guard vessel Ann Harvey found Saunders around 7 a.m. on Wednesday.

Saunders, who is in good shape and is expected to make a full recovery, said he doesn't find the event that traumatic.

"I can laugh now. It's all over."

Saunders was wearing a survival suit, and brought a red gas can to help aid detection.

"One helicopter [did] come — well, a dozen times, they come around me," he said, describing a low-flying helicopter he could see in early-morning darkness.

"I said, she's coming right fair for me. And every time they come, they flash their light at the edge of the pan in the water. And I said I'm going out there to the edge of the water, edge of the pan, and even the light shone on my two feet, on the toes of my boots."

Saunders said the coast guard crew later told him they dealt with a lot of glare from the ice and the sun. As well, he said he was told crews were looking for a boat in the water, and not a person on the ice.

Saunders said the best sight he has ever seen were the two coast guard searchers who helped him aboard their dinghy.