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HONOLULU, Hawaii (CNN) -- In what the Coast Guard called a "pretty big miracle," searchers Tuesday found a man in a small red kayak 120 miles off the coast of the Big Island of Hawaii -- two days after he was lost at sea.
"This is literally that proverb of a needle in a haystack," said Petty Officer Third Class David Mosley, a spokesman for the Coast Guard.
John Stockton, 28, on vacation from Arizona, called 911 from his cell phone at sea Sunday to report his boat was taking on water, Mosley said.
He called again to say he had jumped into his kayak, which had been attached to the boat, and that the boat had sunk.
Mosley said the Coast Guard began a search using a C-130 long-range aircraft and a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion aircraft, both with night vision and infrared equipment.
The planes were searching the area Tuesday when the P-3 spotted Stockton in his kayak, 120 miles (80 nautical miles) southwest of the Big Island of Hawaii, Mosley said.
The C-130 dropped him a life raft and a Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin picked him up and brought him to shore.
"It's actually a pretty big miracle," Mosley said. "He should be playing the lottery right about now."
Stockton's mother was already on her way from Arizona when she heard the news her son had been found, Mosley said.
The Coast Guard notified the FAA, who told the captain of the commercial plane the mother was flying aboard. The captain then announced it to the entire cabin before the plane touched the ground in Hawaii.
Mosley said searchers were in their 22nd search pattern when they found him.
"It just goes to show the thoroughness of the searching crew and those who were running the search," he said.
Stockton had planned to take his boat from the western side of the Big Island in a big arc to its northern tip when he began taking on water, "somewhere out in the middle" of his trip.
He drifted directly into the open ocean.
Stockton was resting in stable condition Tuesday night at the Kona Community Hospital, where a nursing supervisor said he was "a little wind-exposed and a little sun-exposed, but otherwise, he's talking."
If Stockton had had a VHF radio or an emergency positioning beacon, Mosley speculated, he would have been found in the first day.
"Even if it was just a basic one, it would have given a position that would have been picked up by the aircraft, and would have brought the aircraft right to him," he said.
The Coast Guard recommends all sailors carry such a device.
