The body of a man was found Saturday washed up on Huckleberry Island in Long Island Sound.

Reports identify him as Eoin Curran, 30, of Brooklyn, who fell overboard when the boat in which he was taking a sailing lesson was rocked by a severe squall moving in off the Atlantic eight days ago.

"The formal identification must wait until his family arrives from Ireland," Charles Rowe, public information officer for the U.S. Coast Guard New York, said today.

Huckleberry Island and its neighbor, Davids Island, are among  the Long Island Sound Study's Stewardship Sites. 

The group sailing lesson was taking place about a mile off Mamaroneck when the storm hit, causing the boat to heel sharply. Curran and a sailing instructor were thrown overboard. The instructor managed to climb back aboard and throw a flotation device to Curran, but he disappeared from view in the torrential rain and wind.

The flotation device was recovered during last Sunday's search and rescue effort.

A graduate of Trinity College in Dublin, Curran was a computer programmer, Google employee and avid traveler, according to public profiles on the Internet.

The July 25 storm was one of the worst in recent history, local boaters said when interviewed last week.

"The rain was coming down so hard you could barely see a person standing next to you," said Blane Peloso, harbor master at the Horseshoe Harbor Yacht Club in Larchmont, one of the places the Larchmont Fire Department stationed spotters as part of last week's failed search and rescue effort.

"A squall like that will lay the boat over on its side, to the point where you're taking water in the cockpit," he said. "When you see those dark clouds, you have to be more than just aware — you have to keep a close eye on everything going on with the weather."

What has really stuck with local boaters in the aftermath of the storm was the way in which it hit, with tremendous pace and little warning signs.

"I looked at the sky and I said, 'This is a tornado sky,'" said Frank Brancaccio, who has had a boat at the New Rochelle marina for more than 20 years and was out during the area's last major squall, around 14 years ago. "This was one storm that gave almost no warning. It's the first storm I've seen that really jumped on us. You have to respect the water."

The boat in question, a Sonar, described by a number of boaters as a very good and stable teaching vessel, does carry "a lot of sail for a small boat," according to Peloso, something that could have come into play during Sunday's squall.

The Sonar design was commissioned in the 1970s by the Noroton Yacht Club in Darien, CT, which was looking for something easy to handle and fun to sail, to encourage racing on the Sound.

Janusz Machnica, owner of the New York Sailing School in New Rochelle, called the incident "a disaster," and believes the instructor on Curran's boat—his most experienced staff member—did the best he could in a very difficult situation.

When the freak thunderstorm blew through, bringing wind gusts of 40 knots and sustained winds of 30 knots, the Coast Guard and local agencies were deluged with calls.

"The rain was so heavy that visibility was, in truth, at zero," said Rowe. There were nine Mayday calls and  many other boats in distress, who were helped by Coast Guard vessels sent out from Long Island and Staten Island, he said.

The USCG had issued a warning right before the squall hit.

"It was so fast that even though the Coast Guard issued an emergency notice telling everyone to seek safe haven, not everyone was able to do so," Rowe said.

All but the one Mayday call involving Curran were resolved.