Community members and RCMP have been searching Frank's Channel for a 41-year-old man since Saturday, but now they’re focused on looking for his body.

Anthony (Tony) Rabesca’s family believes he went out in a boat early Saturday morning.

His sister, Margaret Grosco, said Rabesca had been drinking in their smokehouse and had talked about taking his boat out.

She said she warned him not to go out on the water.

“He was kind of half cut. I told him to go to sleep. Two in the morning, he was still hanging around. I told him to go to sleep.”

When she woke up, Rabesca was gone and so was his boat.

Anthony Rabesca, 41, has been missing since Saturday and searchers found his boat later that day in Frank's Channel, near Behchoko, N.W.T. (CBC)

“He's never done something like that before. First time he just took off, so I was kind of worried, called my son and started to look for him,” she said.

Hours later, Grosco’s son found Rabesca's canoe and paddles floating near the shore of Frank's Channel.

By the end of the weekend, seven boats were searching the area but friends said Rabesca can’t swim.

On Tuesday searchers combed the bottom of the channel and put floaters in the water to see which way the water is flowing, in hopes of seeing where the current could have taken Rabesca.

An RCMP officer said they're treating the search as a recovery, not a rescue.

The community has come together to help in any way they can.

“He's a good friend of mine too, so when I heard, I just stopped my other job in Russell Lake and came here,” said Joey Young. “We're all hoping that it's going to come up pretty soon - the body right? When it gets enough air in it it'll come up.”

But Grosco still holds out some hope her brother will be found alive.

“For Tony, he's always a good person. Nice to everybody. Likes to dance and stuff like that. He's a good person. Never (got) mad at anybody,” she said.