Allan Hall knew it could have been worse as he sat looking at his semi-submerged 13m launch Tight Five at Mangonui's Mill Bay.
"I thought she was a goner," he said, after the boat had come close to sinking at its mooring on Monday evening.
Air in the bow kept it partially afloat, but getting it to the relative safety of the jetty took some doing.
Far North Radio and Sea Rescue ferried a Mangonui Fire Brigade crew out to the mooring, with an hour and a half of pumping in the dark and rain lifting the boat enough to tow it closer to shore.
A fire appliance was used to pull it into the jetty when the tide rose, but almost 24 hours later the boat was still sitting with its stern on the bottom.