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Missing yacht off the North Island's East Coast -
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Maritime New Zealand wants to extend its search for a missing Tauranga yachtie.
A helicopter has been added to Thursday's search for Paul Van Rensburg and will scour the coast between Tauranga and Gisborne.
The man left Tauranga on Friday and was due to begin a new job in Gisborne on Monday but authorities were alerted when he failed to turn up to work.
The steel-hulled sloop made an excellent target to find with the search aircraft's radar, says Keith Allen from the Rescue Co ordination Centre in Wellington.
Van Rensburg has failed to answer VHF radio calls but may be out of range or have his radio turned off.
He may also have under-estimated how long the voyage from Tauranga to Gisborne would take and may have been hit by the southerly storm which raced up the east coast during the weekend.
An Air Force Orion will head north, while the helicopter will scour the coastline.
"That has already been covered by the plane but we are going to
go over it again to be thorough. It will do a detailed run along
the coast," says a spokesperson for the Rescue Coordination Centre
in Wellington.
Authorities are not at the point where a decision will be made to
call off the search if nothing is found.
"We are certainly not in that situation now. We have got another
search plan. It is another big area we think it is possible he
could be in so we'll have to get over that before we make any
decisions like that," the spokeswoman says.
