"Points of interest" were identified in Lake Wanaka by navy personnel using specialised sonar equipment to search for the body of sailor Trevor Hawke yesterday.
Mr Hawke (70), a life member, founding member and former commodore of the Wanaka Yacht Club, is presumed drowned after he fell overboard in a boating accident on Lake Wanaka on November 17.
Intensive surface and shoreline searches and a subsequent underwater search by police divers in the days after the accident failed to find Mr Hawke.
Three members of the navy's mine countermeasures team and a police dive team supervisor spent about five hours on the water yesterday searching an 800m by 500m section of Roys Bay using a remote-activated sonar equipment before returning to shore about 2.30pm to analyse the footage it had recorded.
"They have a number of points of interest so another day of searching [is planned today] . . . reinvestigating the targets and trying to sharpen them up to try and better identify them," police search and rescue co-ordinator Constable Emma Fleming said late yesterday afternoon.
"If they do more passes of the target it builds a better picture of what it might be."
The searchers expect to resume their task this morning.
