Keith Benton and Carol Verriour are hoping to stay in Whanganui until the end of March 2021. Photo / Mike Tweed
Keith Benton and Carol Verriour are hoping to stay in Whanganui until the end of March 2021. Photo / Mike Tweed
Whanganui East couple Keith Benton and Carol Verriour have spent the past 30 years travelling the globe in their small yacht, the Kirsten Jane.
Whanganui has been their summer base since 2009 but the global outbreak of Covid-19 has forced them to make some drastic changes, with their home nowup for sale and the couple awaiting word from the New Zealand Government on a possible extension of their visitor visas.
Currently allowed to remain in the country until the end of September, Benton said they were now hoping to stay until March before once again boarding the Kirsten Jane, currently birthed in Italy, and putting the finishing touches to a second full circumnavigation of the world by heading back to their native United Kingdom.
"Our main goal at the moment is staying in New Zealand until the end of summer, then trying to get the yacht back to England," Benton said.
"We knew that when we sold up and bought our boat 30 years ago that things could get a bit messy by the end, but I'd do it all again, without a shadow of a doubt."
The Kirsten Jane has been home to Keith Benton and Carol Verriour for much of the past 30 years. Photo / Supplied
The couple's first nautical adventure began in 1990, Benton said.
"There were four other people from the yacht club on Guernsey that were going to go off around the world.
"Carol and I were just planning on getting to Majorca and seeing if we could live aboard a boat, but these guys were talking about Bora Bora and Tahiti, so we changed our mind and ended up going along with them instead.
"After three years they went back to a normal life, but we just refitted and carried on, and the second time we took off by ourselves.
"We went down to Cape Verde then across to Brazil, and we worked our way up to Toronto and the Great Lakes, and pushed on to Alaska.
"We've certainly seen a lot of coast over the years."
Verriour said travelling the world by boat meant they could get to parts of it that were off the beaten track.
"You come ashore in these hard to reach places and people are interested in you, and you are interested in them.
"One thing I'll always remember is going to Devil's Island, off French Guyana, which was one of the French colonial prisons, and it's not a place you can get to unless you have your own boat.
The couple in New Caledonia in the mid-2000s. Photo / Supplied
"They shot a movie there called Papillion in the 1970s and we were able to go and see the prison as we saw it in the film.
"There have been some hairy moments along the way, but we haven't had to put the washboards in and go below to pray just yet."
Benton said currently they were only 600 nautical miles short of two full circumnavigations of the globe, but when they do leave New Zealand this time, be it at the end of September or the end of March, it would be hard for them to return.
"There are pages and pages of stuff on the Immigration New Zealand website, and because we're on a visitor visa we've had a whole lot of medical tests and background checks to try and get done, which is costing a lot of money.
"Everyone, including Immigration New Zealand themselves, are feeling their way through this [Covid-19], but it would be great to get that extension and make the most of the last little while we have here.
"We love New Zealand, and we're really grateful for the time we've spent in Whanganui."
Verriour said her husband was her "enabler" when it came to planning their voyages.
"I say, 'let's do this', and he fixes things up and off we go.
"There's a couple more adventures left in us yet, and there's always someone along the way to give you a hand."
