Man disappears from dinghy in Bay Of Islands

A man who vanished from a dinghy had been seen earlier by fishers surprised he was so far out at sea in a small vessel.
The man is believed to have drowned after falling overboard off the Bay of Islands.
An extensive, two-day sea-and-air search failed to find the 63-year-old local man, who may have gone out in his boat on Thursday.
He was last seen at 1pm on Friday by a passing fishing vessel about 11km off Nine Pin Rock.
Surprised to see the 3.5m dinghy so far out, the crew had taken a look through binoculars, thinking at first from a distance it might have been a whale.
The man was aboard and seemed to be in no difficulty.
Five hours later when returning to Opua in the evening, they again came across the dinghy, which was empty.
The alarm was raised at about 9.30pm on Friday, Northland Search and Rescue operation head Senior Sergeant Cliff Metcalfe said.
The search was carried out from first light and until dark on Saturday and yesterday, covering 130 square nautical miles of the outer Bay of Islands and out to sea.
On Saturday afternoon a fixed-wing coastguard aircraft was brought in to join two coastguard vessels and one auxilliary vessel.
A helicopter hired by the missing man's family had also searched, along with three or four private boats, concentrating on mainland and island shorelines between Cape Brett and the Cavalli Islands.
Mr Metcalfe said it was a mystery why the experienced deep-water sailor had taken his small craft so far out.
It did not appear he had gone out fishing.
While there had been passing squalls in the area, conditions had not been rough.
Two lifejackets were found in the dinghy, but the man was known to not usually wear one.
"If he had been wearing a lifejacket we'd have found him, probably alive," Mr Metcalfe said.
The decision was made last night to scale down the search.