leading solo sailors who has been missing since last month.

Mr. Mike Plant, who was sailing to France from New York City aboard the 60-foot sloop Coyote , was last heard from on October 21 when he radioed a nearby tanker, saying he had lost electrical power and was hand-steering his boat.

He did not ask for assistance and said he was continuing his sail to France.

Last night, a US Coast Guard spokesman said there were no sightings of the 42-year-old sailor nor his vessel, but the search has not yet been called off.

He said yesterday's search covered 48,000 square miles, consisting of two separate areas.

US Navy P-3 Orions and two Coast Guard C-130 aircraft searched some 700 to 1,000 square miles northeast of Bermuda, the same area searched last Friday.

And another 14,400 square miles, about 420 miles north of the Azores, were searched by two other C-130s, the spokesman said.

The Coast Guard was last night deciding on its next course of action.

The search began in earnest last Wednesday when a worried friend of Mr. Plant contacted the Canadian Coast Guard and helped with a computer search for an emergency signal from Coyote .

Mr. Plant sent out a distress signal on October 27 which was picked up by the Canadians. But they took no action because the signal had only been a short burst and they could not identify it.