After three straight days of intense searching, efforts to find a Cobb County man believed to have drowned in Lake Lanier will be scaled back Thursday.
Surface and sonar searches will continue, but divers will be on stand-by at the lake while working on other, training operations, Sgt. Stephen Wilbanks with the Hall County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday afternoon.
Jeffrey Nause, 44, jumped from a sailboat just after midnight Saturday morning near Three Sisters Island and became distressed and went under water, investigators have said. Alcohol is a possible contributing factor, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said Monday.
Heavy boat traffic throughout the weekend made searching dangerous for divers, but those efforts were in full force early Monday.
The DNR was one of several agencies assisting with searches on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but Nause was not located. More than 20 square acres were searched, and divers reached depths of 130 feet in 42-degree water during the efforts, Wilbanks said.
Visibility for divers in the area is around 30 inches due to standing timber below the water's surface, Wilbanks said. Water depths range from 70 to 140 feet in the area where investigators believe Nause's body is located, he said.
"Compounding the physical difficulties of the search are the facts that the incident occurred during the hours of darkness, the vessel was moving at the time, and there was no GPS equipment on board to mark an exact location," Wilbanks said in an emailed statement Wednesday afternoon.
In addition to DNR investigators, divers from Forsyth County helped with the search, which involved eight boats on the water and a helicopter, Robin Hill, DNR spokeswoman, told the AJC.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 29 also assisted, Wilbanks said.
Cadaver dogs from the Dawson County EMS indicated two possible locations for Nause on Monday. But neither the sonar equipment nor the divers were able to locate anything in the area, Wilbanks said. No dives are planned for the coming weekend.
Nause, of Mableton, is the CEO of an Atlanta-based company specializing in semiconductor development and production. A Mississippi native, Nause graduated from Georgia Tech in 1991 with a degree in engineering, the university confirmed.
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