Photo Recall: Last minute reprieve for bedraggled sailors

Renata Pavlenko, then 24, and Boris Bainov, then 47 are now married and live the quiet life with their two sons. Photo / Sav Shulman

Twelve years ago, a Russian couple sailed over the Manukau bar into Huia after six months in a leaky boat. Immigration was not impressed. A New Zealand film, Russian Snark, now in cinemas, is inspired by their story.

The strain of a night in the police cells and imminent deportation back to Russia shows on the faces of Boris Bainov and Renata Pavlenko, then aged 47 and 24, as a police officer hustles them into Auckland International Airport.

It was November 1999, a tense moment caught by photographer Sav Schulman, then freelancing for the New Zealand Herald.

Just as Schulman began taking photos, the Herald reporter's cellphone rang and he handed it to Bainov. Russian-speaking lawyer Colin Amery had left a High Court drugs trial to stop the couple's deportation, after a Whangaparaoa businesswoman heard of their plight and offered to be Bainov's immigration sponsor. Bainov and Pavlenko never did get on that flight.

The Herald on Sunday tracked down the couple this week at their 1960s Stillwater bach. Here they live a quiet life with their two sons, Leo, 7, and Nicholas, 5.

Under a palm tree nearby is the hulk of the tiny yacht which carried Bainov, during three journeys over three years, from Vladivostok. Bainov said reports of their epic voyage became garbled in the translation once they reached New Zealand. When he and girlfriend Pavlenko, now his wife, sailed into Manukau Harbour, reporters thought they had both been at sea for three years.

Instead, Bainov had made two miserable attempts to sail the boat on his own, the first time to South Korea, the second time to Guam, in the Marianas Islands. There he left the boat and returned to Russia.

For his third and final voyage, he was joined by Pavlenko. The pair flew to Guam and from there sailed to Vanuatu. Keen to watch the America's Cup in Auckland, they set sail again in May 1999, taking 21 days to drift the 2000km across the Pacific.

They took their chances and headed for the Manukau Harbour. "I had no idea how bad the Manukau bar was," says Bainov.

His first impression of Huia was that he had arrived in "paradise".

Locals gave the couple a hot shower and food, but someone called Immigration. Within hours, the couple were in custody. Bainov, now 59, recently resigned from an Albany plastics factory where he has worked for more than 10 years. Pavlenko plans to become a radiologist.