UPDATED: Missing Boater Found Dead After Sailboat Found Off Long Island Sound

The body of the Haddam man that search and rescue crews had been looking for in Long Island Sound all day was found at 2:30 p.m., state police said.

Francis Closter III, 63, of Little Meadow Road in Haddam, was found by a Connecticut State Police Marine Unit, according to a release issued by state police Lt. J. Paul Vance. The exact location of the body was not disclosed. The release said Closter was pronounced dead and was taken to the Office of the Chief States Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy.

It was 8:30 this morning that Closter's wife called police to report that she had not heard from her husband since he left at noon Thursday on his sailboat from Haddam, bound for Clinton. He was due to arrive at the marina at 5 p.m.

On Friday morning, Closter’s boat was found floating at the docks of ConocoPhillips in Northville on the North Fork of Long Island.

According to the Coast Guard, the boat was spotted by a ConocoPhillips employee around 5:30 a.m. on Friday, unmoored with the sails up, electronics running, with the boat owner's wallet and glasses found aboard the boat.

The Jagular, "appeared from the GPS that it might have went into a circle pattern at an unknown time closer to the Connecticut side of the Long Island Sound," according to Lt. David Lessard of the Riverhead Police Department. "Then it started tracking from northeast back to our location."

Lessard said no foul play was suspected at this time.

Vance said the state Department of Environmental Protection will investigate what happened.

The U.S. Coast Guard, DEP, and rescue crews from Madison, Westbrook and Clinton fire departments searched the 60-degree waters off Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison all day Friday.

Closter kept his boat at Midway Marina.

"I don't know him personally, but I did see him and his sailboat just the other day," said Roy Guile, as he worked on his sailboat's mast at Midway Marina in Haddam Friday afternoon.  "If he was heading to Clinton, he shouldn't have ended up east of the Connecticut River. But if you have mechanical problems or lose control with winds and the tides, you could end up almost anywhere."

Members of the Suffolk County Marine Bureau, the Suffolk County Aviation Unit, and fire departments from Wading River, Riverhead, Jamesport were notified as was the Southold Town Police Department.

Around 9:00 a.m. Friday, authorities towed the boat from its location at the ConocoPhillips dock, about 100 yards off shore, to Matticuk Inlet. Lessard said the boat would be impounded by Riverhead Police.

Col. Kyle Overturf, the head of the state Department of Environmental Protection's Conservation Police, said the search was hampered by the foggy weather Friday morning.