Helicopter joins hunt for missing yacht

A helicopter is to join the search today for missing yachtie Paul Rensburg and will scour the coast between Tauranga and Gisborne.

Mr Rensburg, 40, left Tauranga on his 11-metre yacht Tafadzwa on Friday to sail to Gisborne where he was due to begin a new job on Monday.

When he failed turn up to work the authorities were alerted and a search began.

An Air Force Orion and another aircraft have searched thousands of square miles of ocean in the last two days without finding any trace of the yacht.

Today the helicopter will search the coastline from Gisborne north, a spokeswoman for the Rescue Coordination Centre in Wellington said.

"That has already been covered by the plane but we are going to go over it again to be thorough. It (the helicopter) will do a detailed run along the coast."

Mechanical problems had delayed the Orion's takeoff from Whenuapai in Auckland today and it was expected in the air by 10am.

It would search further north over an area covering 27,000 square miles of ocean. This search would take five or six hours.

Search conditions were considered good.

Authorities were not at the point where a decision would be made to call off the search if nothing was 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 said.

Mr Rensburg was an experienced sailor and his steel hulled sloop was believed to be well equipped although the rescue centre did not know what radios he had on board apart from a short range VHF radio.

- NZPA