A lucky Tauranga boat owner is reunited with his missing boat, and all the dive and fishing gear onboard, after the 5.5m Stabicraft disappeared from Motiti Island on April 23.

Recreational fishermen found the boat about 65 nautical miles from Motiti Island near ‘The Hook', north of Red Mercury Island on Thursday.

The Whitianga Coastguard towed it back to shore.

'It was actually found by a boat that was way out trolling,” says Whitianga Coastguard operations manager Graham Caddy.

'Last night we had a call from a boat out at The Hook, which is 16 miles north of the Mercury Islands.”

Graham says the fishermen has called to say they had found a Stabicraft floating around out there with nobody on it.

'Luckily the owner of that vessel had read on a local fishing website that this boat had gone missing from Motiti. So he had put two and two together.

'He took it under tow. We met him just on the other side of Red Mercury and took over and bought it back here. The owner came up from Tauranga and gratefully picked it up last night.”

From the look of it, Graham thinks it may not have been secured properly.

The boat second hand is worth about $35-40,000 says Graham.

'He had only owned it for two days before it went missing, so it wasn't insured. So he was a lucky boy to get it back. Plus it had a whole lot of dive gear and fishing gear on board which was all intact.

'It's come a long way from Motiti to The Hook there. That's a long way. If it hadn't been found there, next destination would be South America, I would imagine – or it may have bumped up round Great Barrier somewhere around there if it had stayed afloat.”