The Oz Family Barrie

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Australian family stranded on Pacific island
An Australian family faces six months of subsisting on turtle and sleeping under the stars after they were stranded on a tiny Pacific island during a violent tropical storm.
By Bonnie Malkin
29 Mar 2010

The Barrie family, from Perth, were on a two-year sailing trip around the Pacific when their boat struck a reef off the Micronesian islet of Mogmog in heavy winds and was practically destroyed. Andrew Barrie, his wife Jennie, and two daughters, have since taken refuge on the island in the Ulithi Atoll, where they described the 200 inhabitants as living "very, very traditionally".

Mr Barrie told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that his family were resigned to remaining on the island, which has no electricity or running water, until they could fix the boat, a project that he estimated would take several months. Mr Barrie and several helpful islanders were planning to make another attempt to get the catamaran off the reef today, he said.

Speaking via satellite phone, Mr Barrie told the Australia All Over programme that the last reading on his boat's instruments had been more than 90 knots. "We had massive waves just coming over the boat and lost both anchors," he said. The boat, Windrider, also lost its rotor and keel in the storm.

Mr Barrie said the local people had been helpful in trying to retrieve the "ruined" boat, which was still on the surf line. "One of the things that caused most of the damage to it was, there's an old metal structure on the beach here that the Americans left behind after World War II. It's all jagged metal and that's what completely ripped one hull," he said.

Describing his family's new home, Mr Barrie said that young children on the island walked around playing ukuleles and that church service were held, but without a priest. His daughters, who are being home-schooled by his wife, a trained teacher, were adjusting to life on Mogmog, he said.,

"[The children have] been very good so far but this is very different to what they're used to," he said, adding they were sleeping on a concrete slab, and that there were rats running around. It's very different from our boat." The Sydney Morning Herald reported that last year, when the family hit a reef at an island off Western Australia and bent their rudder, Mr Barrie was able to repair the boat himself.

Mogmog is located in Micronesia's Yap state. The island has no infrastructure and locals eat what they catch, usually coconut crabs, turtles and wild chickens. Food is cooked on an open fire and the island is run by a chief who decides who can and cannot visit. The only way on and off the island is by motorboat to the neighbouring island of Flalap, which has a small airport serviced by a missionary plane.

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Why would they be sleeping on a concrete slab? Have they not seen any Bear Grylls?!