A small sailboat capsized Sunday afternoon on Marsh Lake when a sudden gust of wind swept across the water.

The one man on board was rescued from the water in a freight canoe at 3:45 p.m. by Jim Fowler.

The drama unfolded after the boat flipped in front of Fowler's house located in the Judas Creek subdivision just south of the Lakeview Marina. The area is about 40 kilometres south of Whitehorse.

'It was a sudden squall that came through and it blew up really quickly in an unusual direction right across the lake,' Jim Healey, who saw the boat roll over, said in an interview today. 'It was pretty wild conditions.'

Healey had noticed the boat on the water a few minutes before it capsized and thought it may have trouble in the windy conditions. He grabbed his binoculars to watch the boat and phoned 911 as soon as it rolled over.

The emergency call went in at 3:27 p.m., according to Mike Larsen at Marsh Lake Fire Rescue. Eight or nine residents saw the boat flip, all phoning 911 at the same time.

The afternoon was calm and warm before the one big gust of wind swept across the lake, he said.

Larsen sent a first response team over to the rescue site and put out a request for help on the marine radio channel.

'Time is of the essence when someone is in the water,' he said.

Two boats responded to the call and the fire rescue Zodiak arrived within minutes.

Fowler had already pulled the victim from the water when the crew arrived, and there was an ambulance waiting for him on shore. Marsh Lake Fire Rescue towed the victim's sailboat to shore.

The boater's name was not available.

While there is always concern about hypothermia, the victim seemed to escape the accident unharmed, said Larsen. The minute his boat was pulled to shore, he began bailing it out and checking for damage.

'We managed to tow the boat to shore where the owner waded out and righted it,' he says. 'The last time we saw him, he was all happy and bailing out his sailboat.'

The same gust of wind also brought down a powerline perpendicular to the place where the boat capsized.

The force of the wind snapped a tree that fell onto a powerline inside the subdivision.