Yellowknife (Jun 21/06) - A 43-year-old Ndilo man is feared dead after falling from a boat into Yellowknife Bay Sunday morning.

As a community search involving members from Ndilo and Dettah scoured both land and water for signs of the missing man Sunday and Monday, a dive search of the area was put on hold Monday while a sonar device was being sent from southern Alberta, according to RCMP.

Yellowknife RCMP and a member of the Canadian Coast Guard bring a coast guard zodiac to dock after a Tuesday morning search of Burwash Point and surrounding area. - Mike Bryant/NNSL photo

The RCMP declined to release the man's name at the family's request.

On Tuesday morning RCMP - assisted by Arctic Divers - decided to resume its search of the waters near Burwash Point, despite not having received the sonar equipment. These efforts were aided by the Civilian Emergency Response Team while the Civilian Air Search and Rescue Association engaged in an aerial search of the area.

The man was last seen early June 18, as he navigated an open-hulled aluminum boat away from a residence in Ndilo towards Burwash Point.

According to Yellowknife RCMP, the man was intoxicated prior to setting off and his family had physically tried to stop him from heading out on to the lake. He was not wearing a safety vest.

Within minutes of the departure, RCMP were called and monitored the boat from the shore before it disappeared from sight. Thirty minutes later the boat was found unoccupied, motor running and turning in circles near Burwash Point.

Three boats, two from the Yellowknife Coast Guard Auxiliary and one manned by the Yellowknife fire department, immediately rushed to the scene. A "grid-pattern" search between Mosher Island, Jolliffe Island and Burwash Point was unsuccessful.

As Don Antoine was heading up the community search from Ndilo, Richard Edjericon was co-ordinating Dettah's.

"We're setting up a base camp at Burwash Point," Edjericon told Yellowknifer Tuesday morning, adding that more volunteers would be joining the search. "Today we'll be in full swing with about 10 to 20 people involved."

For two days, Wayne Gzowski, regional operations manager for Arctic Divers, has been among three divers looking for the missing man in the water where the boat was located abandoned.

"Visibility is less than five feet so you can only do so much," Gzowski said after Tuesday's dive search failed to turn up anything. "We've got one area designated but it's like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Gzowski adds he expects the side-scan sonar to arrive from southern Alberta which will aid in getting a picture of the bay's bottom, approximately 20 feet deep on average with several deeper areas reaching down to 60 feet.

This is the third such boating tragedy in the territory this season. On June 10, a 52-year-old Gameti man drowned after falling overboard during a duck hunt and in May, a 26-year-old Behchoko man drowned after the canoe he was in capsized in rough water. Neither of them were wearing life vests.