A woman believed to be sailboarder Monica Weyant died of accidental drowning after suffering a blow to the head, the city medical examiner's office said yesterday.

Officials yesterday were awaiting test results before declaring a positive identification, but the body is believed to be that of Weyant, 36, of Ka'a'awa, an experienced sailboarder who went out for a routine sail in Kane'ohe Bay Saturday morning.

The body was found Monday about a mile from where Weyant started sailing.

Weyant's husband, Dan, yesterday said he was at a loss to explain how his water-savvy wife might have been killed. He said he could only imagine that she had fallen and somehow had been hit in the head with the mast.

"It's very possible that the rig was not properly locked in, and it popped loose," he said. "On this particular kind of board, the universal joint connects to the board by a little lever-lock mechanism.

"It's possible that she did not fully engage the lock, or that it failed somehow and released the rig. But you can get hit with the mast with it attached to the board. If you fall wrong, or pull it in after you. But it's a million-to-one-shot kind of thing. I'm at a complete loss."

Monica Weyant went for a quick sail around Kane'ohe Bay Saturday morning and didn't return.

Helicopter crews with the Honolulu Fire Department and Coast Guard, along with surface personnel and teams of volunteer searchers, scoured the waters for three days before finding a woman's body next to a seawall along Lilipuna Road, not far from where Weyant's sailboard had washed up Saturday afternoon.

Before the two were married six years ago, Dan Weyant said, Monica had bumped her head while windsurfing. But that was in extremely windy conditions while she was riding a small board with a race sail.

On Saturday, Monica Weyant used "a big, floaty board and she was just cruising around in flat water in 15 knots of breeze," Dan Weyant said. "So, it wasn't anything like the conditions you'd expect that to happen in.

"It's the kind of board you'd use on a lake or a flat body of water. It was an easy, cruise-around, not super high-performance board."

The medium-size sail she used that day was one she'd probably used more than any other, he said.

Dan Weyant, 40, said he was grateful to the many people who helped search for his wife. It was difficult, grim work, he said, that lasted many hours.

On Saturday, Weyant said, "I carried the board down to the water for her, but not the rig. I didn't hook them up together. We were doing other things, and the rig is light enough for her to carry easily. So I turned around and went back to what we were doing, and I didn't even see her sail out. I never said goodbye or anything.

"She was just going out for a quick run and would be back in an hour or an hour and a half — a blast around the bay. ... You know, we didn't think twice about it."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.