Stranded in Oz, Kiwi cops sail home

It started off as a joke.

With the trans-Tasman bubble closed, Kiwis Kate and Con Barrell were stranded in Australia late last year, with no way to get home.

“I joked to Con, ‘the only way we are going to get home is by boat’ - so that’s what we did,” Kate says.

Thus, an epic ten-day mission home to Nelson on a Sunseeker Manhattan 66 was born.

And not only did the husband-and-wife duo sail themselves back to their loved ones, but they also brought five other Kiwis with them.

Born and bred Nelsonian Kate and ex-All Black Con, who hails from the Far North and Christchurch, lived on the Gold Coast for 12 years where they were both in the police force.

“A couple of times a year I would come back to Nelson to see family, but when the borders shut down again, we thought ‘if this is the way of the world, we’d rather be home’.”

They couldn’t fly back and go on MIQ waiting lists due to Kate’s assistance dog Boots.  

“So, within a week we were looking at boats and that was it.”

Con, who was a member of the All Blacks in 1996 and 1997, says he was “born and bred” with boats, however, it was foreign territory for Kate.

“It was a mammoth task, but we went and got licensed and spoke to every expert we possibly could.”

They put a crew together, which consisted of some “pretty handy” people.

“I put a post up on a bunch of trans-Tasman groups for Kiwis stuck in Australia to see who would be keen to join us and we got flooded with people desperate to get home,” Kate says.

“There was one guy who had tried nine times to get into MIQ and one who hadn’t seen his wife and children for months on end.”

They soon put together the perfect team.

“We had a diesel mechanic and a guy who had done the crossing over a dozen times. We wanted people who knew what to do if things went wrong,” Kate says.

“We were all strangers from all different walks of life, but we all had one common goal of wanting to get home.”

After some meticulous planning, they set sail on 14 December and Kate describes the first 24 hours as “rough”.

“It was pretty intense, and I’m tough. We had side swells for hours on end. All the booze came out of the fridge and there were days you couldn’t even stand.

“But we had a couple of days where it was just like glass and the sunrises and sunsets were next level.”

The only setback was a water leak in one of the main engines halfway into the journey, which they had to travel four days with.

“We had 1000 litres of water to last us the trip so in the end it was wet-wipe showers and the boys had to do what they had to do off the back of the boat.”

Kate says nine-year-old Boots handled the journey like a true sailor.

“She wasn’t too impressed at the start, but after she settled in, she handled it like a boss.”

They arrived in Opua on 22 December for customs clearance and two days of quarantine.

“We had to be on the boat for ten days minimum and seven of those - 168 hours - had to be outside of New Zealand territorial waters,” Kate says.

Kate and Con made it to Nelson on Boxing Day, and with all the family tracking their progress it was a memorable reunion.

“They stood up on Princes Drive with the binoculars and the drones. The emotion was pretty intense as we came through The Cut.”

Kate says they are now in “decompressing” mode and plan to enjoy the moment.

And would she do it again?

“No.” she says.

“I’d do it on a cruise ship though. We knew it would be hard, but we did it.”