Neil Barnett
Crew
58 year old Neil was born and brought up in Herefordshire, England. He learned to sail as a youngster and has done much of his keeler sailing around the UK coast and also has chartered sail boats in different parts of the world on family holidays.
He now, since Nov 2002, lives in New Zealand with his wife Rebecca. They have 2 grown up children, Nick 27 and Ginny 25, both of whom now live in UK and Australia respectively, albeit temporarily.
Neil has always been very sporty and enjoyed the outdoors and sailing with Oceans of Hope will be a fantastic challenge and a way to keep his love of sailing going. Since his diagnosis of MS in 2007 Neil has made great changes to his life and lifestyle and sadly has had to decrease his regular sailing in his local harbour so this challenge is timely and exciting. Darwin to Singapore via Bali leg.
Work life is reduced but still pretty busy running his own small boutique business, www.kingfishersmokehouse.co.nz smoking the locally farmed salmon, as well as maintaining their small holding, while Rebecca works locally as a Registered Nurse.