COX'S BAZAR: To say that the Pudneys were adventurous would be an understatement. This family of four from New Zealand travelled back and forth between Bangladesh and New Zealand for two and a half years as they set about building their dream. They had found a dockyard in Cox’s Bazar with the kind of craftsmen they needed and access to the timber required to build their 58-foot catamaran, the Island Girl. This would be their home, and they planned to sail the seas aboard it.
But the Island Girl was shipwrecked on August 25, resulting in a tragedy. While three were rescued, one Pudney child drowned. His body was recovered days later.
The boat was unlike an ordinary vessel. Two wooden hulls ran parallel to each other, joined by thick logs. A broad platform stretched between them. The front was open, the middle was the family's living space and the steering position was at the rear. A tarpaulin canopy covered the platform, offering some shelter from the elements.
For six months, it had been a home for the Pudneys.
John Edward Pudney, 74, his Chinese wife Bella, 34, and their two sons, Ralph, 13, and Albert, 16, slept, ate and lived aboard the Island Girl as it lay anchored near the BIWTA jetty on the Bakkhali River.
They had spent years and around Tk 1.5 crore on the catamaran.
Then, on August 25, the boat broke apart in the rough waters near Nazirartek Point at the mouth of the Moheshkhali Channel. Albert did not survive the shipwreck.
His body was recovered near Ward 1 of Cox’s Bazar municipality after an extensive search.
For the family, the dream of sailing across the seas ended in the waters of Cox’s Bazar.
The Daily Star spoke to John about the family's journey, the tragedy and the boat that had become their home.
The family was heading towards Chattogram to deal with visa-related complications.
John and his younger son, Ralph, were at the rear, near the steering wheel. Bella and Albert were in the middle section.
As Island Girl was leaving the channel, Ralph noticed something was wrong. One of the logs connecting the two hulls had cracked.
John immediately tried to turn the boat around.
But the sea was already pushing hard.
The other connecting logs began to break under the force of the waves.
Then the middle section collapsed.
“Suddenly, a huge wave came over,” John said.
Within seconds, the Island Girl had split into two.
The four family members were thrown into the water as pieces of the boat scattered around them.
John, who said he could not swim, struggled to keep himself afloat, clinging to pieces of the wreckage.
Ralph reached him and helped pull him onto part of the broken boat.
“I had no strength,” John said.
Ralph helped him place a leg on the engine-room hatch and climb out of the water.
Once he had caught his breath, John told Ralph to get the emergency rubber lifeboat and try to find his mother and Albert.
But the wreckage was still tossing about violently.
The two broken sections of Island Girl repeatedly slammed into each other, making it dangerous to get close to the other section.
According to John, Bella eventually emerged from beneath the wreckage and climbed into the lifeboat. Albert never made it out.
Bella told him that she had been holding Albert beneath a canopy where air had initially become trapped. She tried to keep his head above the water.
At first, Albert appeared to be breathing. Then the bubbles stopped. He became unresponsive.
John said he later wondered whether his son could have been revived had he been brought out of the water earlier.
Local fishermen and residents rushed towards the scene, and three members of the family were eventually rescued. While John alleges to have seen a man collecting their belongings from the wreckage, locals say they could not understand what the Pudneys were saying.
But John alleged that a man on the wreckage could hear Bella and Albert screaming for help but did not immediately go down to rescue them.
He said he intended to raise the matter with police. The allegation could not be independently verified.
Several fishermen told news outlets that they could not understand what the family members were saying, making it difficult for them to respond.
Albert's body, later recovered, was being kept in a hospital morgue freezer, district administration officials said. John wants to arrange his son's funeral in Bangladesh.
As Bangladesh has no New Zealand embassy, he has been communicating with the New Zealand embassy in Sri Lanka about new passports for himself and his family.
The remains of Island Girl are now under the supervision of the Coast Guard station at Nuniachhara, police said.
They are also searching for belongings John says were lost in the accident – like money, valuables and important documents.
The family first arrived in Bangladesh in February 2024 and travelled in and out of the country around 10 to 12 times by air.
The family entered Bangladesh on port entry visas and, on several occasions, left after their visa periods had expired, police said.
John said their visas expired twice and that on one occasion they left Bangladesh after paying overstay fines.
The family generally extended their visas from Chattogram, he said.
Their latest visa reportedly expired on May 24, 2026.
It was while trying to deal with these visa-related complications that the family began its voyage that ended so fatally at Nazirartek.
John said he had years of experience building wooden houses and boats and chose Bangladesh because the timber he needed was readily available.
Island Girl was built mainly from Garjan balsam timber at a shipbuilding yard in SM Para, Cox’s Bazar, with the help of local craftsmen.
John said he knew Garjan trees were found mainly in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Because cutting such trees is restricted in Bangladesh, he said he followed the necessary legal procedures to obtain the timber.
He paid extra for six high-quality Garjan logs to connect the two hulls.
Those logs supported the living platform above them. Each hull was divided into three compartments, giving the family six rooms in total.
Two engines, each producing around 120 horsepower, powered the boat, according to John.
The original plan was to finish the vessel in five or six months. Instead, it took more than a year and a half.
After John first arrived in Bangladesh, he lived in a house in Link Road of Cox’s Bazar, where he began working on the boat.
In June 2025, he rented an apartment at Al Baraka Tower, opposite Cox's Bazar Shaheed Minar, and stayed there for around six months.
Eventually, however, the boat itself became his home.
The plan was bigger than Bangladesh.
John wanted to take the boat out through the country's waterways, across the sea and eventually back to New Zealand.
They had already made one trip to Chattogram aboard the Island Girl.
On the return journey, they anchored at Sonadia Island, where the family was reportedly attacked by a group of miscreants.
The Bangladesh Coast Guard said the family had been staying with their boat on Sonadia Island in Moheshkhali when they were reportedly ambushed on April 8, 2026.
Coast Guard teams rescued the tourists and recovered most of their looted belongings, according to a statement issued at the time.
John said the family's plan had been to continue towards Thailand from Chattogram on that trip. But they could not make the journey because of the prevailing diesel shortage there.
They were returning to Cox’s Bazar to get more diesel and were attacked as they anchored at Sonadia, he said.
Had the latest voyage gone as planned, John said, the family was intending to leave Bangladesh aboard Island Girl for New Zealand around October or November.
The broken boat has inevitably raised questions. Could a wooden catamaran joined by logs withstand the heavy waves of the Bay of Bengal? Was the large living platform between the hulls strong enough for open-sea travel? And were the materials used in its construction of the quality required?
John rejects the thoughts that the basic design was unsuitable.
He said he had extensive experience building wooden vessels and that catamarans are widely used in countries such as New Zealand and Australia.
In his view, the problem was not the design.
It was the timber.
John said he had paid a premium for what he was told were the best-quality logs to connect the two hulls.
After the boat was completed, however, he noticed signs that some of the timber was not of the quality he had expected. He also said he later found a significant cockroach infestation aboard the vessel.
John said the boat had been designed with New Zealand's rough sea conditions in mind and argued that waters around New Zealand can be more challenging than those around Bangladesh. But that is John's account.
The actual cause of the shipwreck will depend on further investigation and technical assessment.
The family's decision to build a boat in Cox's Bazar makes more sense when seen against John's past.
Police sources said John had been living outside New Zealand for around 18 years. Before leaving New Zealand, he worked with the coast guard for about 10 years, according to police.
He later lived in Georgia and Thailand.
John describes himself as a professional engineer with extensive experience building wooden houses and boats.
In Georgia, Australia and New Zealand, he said he leased forest land from governments, built wooden houses and sold them — work that required practical knowledge of timber and construction.
Travel, building and self-reliance had shaped much of his life.
So, when he came to Cox’s Bazar and began constructing a wooden catamaran, it was not, in his telling, an isolated experiment.
It was simply another chapter in the life he had chosen. The Island Girl brought all three elements together. It was a house. It was a construction project. And it was supposed to be a passport to the sea.
The family now faces a different kind of journey.
Cox's Bazar Additional Deputy Commissioner Shahidul Alam said the district administration arranged hotel accommodation for them after the accident.
The administration is also providing food, maintaining regular contact with the family and arranging police security, he said.
Bella said they lost money, bank-related documents and other valuables in the accident.
Much of their property remains missing.
John said he planned to sell the two remaining hulls of Island Girl to raise money for the family's immediate needs.
The boat that was built as a symbol of freedom and adventure has become one of the few remaining assets the family can potentially turn into cash.
John said he had informed the New Zealand embassy in Sri Lanka about the family's situation but had not received the assistance he had hoped for.
For now, he wants to remain in Bangladesh long enough to arrange Albert's funeral.
The family came to Bangladesh to build a vessel that would take them around the world.
Instead, they are preparing to say goodbye to Albert on the shores where their dreams came to an abrupt and cruel end. - The Daily Star/ANN
