Lovers' voyage greeted with astonishment

By Tony Wall

Residents of a tiny north Pacific island were stunned yesterday to hear that a pair of Russian adventurers they befriended several months ago had made it all the way to New Zealand in their leaky boat.

Boris Bainov and girlfriend Renata Pavlenko caused a stir when they sailed - or rather drifted - across the treacherous Manukau bar after a 2000km, 21-day voyage from Vanuatu.

But that was just the latest leg of a 10,000km odyssey that began in Vladivostok three years ago.

The couple spent more than a month on the island of Rota, just above Guam in the Marianas Islands, and by all accounts were a big hit there.

An immigration officer on the island, James Martin, told the Weekend Herald he not only dealt with the pair in an official capacity but socialised with them as well.

"I went drinking with them a few times; they liked to party," he said.

Mr Martin said the couple technically became overstayers when they stayed beyond their 30-day tourist permits, and they were facing deportation. Eventually they packed up and left, heading for the Caroline Islands.

That was several months ago, and he was amazed to hear the pair had made it to Auckland in their 8m aluminium boat, the Fore Tiv.

The boat broke its temporary mooring at Huia on the Manukau Harbour yesterday, causing problems for a local boatie who jumped on board and tried to sail it. "It was like an aluminium beer can."

But Mr Bainov - finally relaxing after a hectic 48 hours in which he came within a whisker of being sent back to Russia by the Immigration Service - revealed some of the boat's secrets yesterday.

He named the boat Fore Tiv because he was 44 when he finished it. He said the boat did not have a keel - the hull was not strong enough - so he put 26 specially-designed, 30cm fins along the bottom to stop drifting and to help it sail upwind.

He uses 24 plastic, water-filled containers weighing 1.5 tonnes as ballast.

Mr Bainov said he built the boat from a 30-year-old hull he bought for a few dollars from a steamship company that was about to send it to the scrap yard.

He had crossed the Mediterranean once on a windsurfer, but had no experience of ocean sailing. He tried the boat three times in the waters around Vladivostok before starting his epic journey.

He showed the Weekend Herald over the boat yesterday while it was moored several hundred metres offshore near French Bay. Its cabin is tiny and it is difficult to see how two people can live in it at sea for weeks at a time.

Mr Bainov and Ms Pavlenko, a folk and disco dancer who is embarrassed at being described on television as an exotic dancer, paid tribute to their immigration sponsor, Whangaparaoa woman Katie McFadyen.

"Without her we would have been back in Russia without our boat and belongings. That is not a good way to celebrate the millennium," said Mr Bainov.

His plans for New Year?

He wants to sail back out over the Manukau bar, saying goodbye to New Zealand in style.