Living off the land

Kerstin Mueller’s life started conventionally. A small-town girl, then a high school teacher, that’s normal. Learned to scuba dive? Nothing to see here. But with time and intention, this orthodox life eventually gave way to something far more unusual.

Words: Britt Coker

Kerstin grew up in Reefton, a long way from the coast. Her family were landlubbers, not sailors, but after university, she found herself teaching at Marlborough Girls College and learning to scuba dive in the Sounds. It was here she met people who were living on boats and others planning to retire on them. A thought formed. “Oh, you could live on a boat? That sounds like a good idea.”

That good idea didn’t fade away. Kerstin spent several years travelling, and while working in Ireland, she did a basic sailing course and met more people living the dream. “Initially I thought, Oh, you have to be rich to live on a boat, it's not really attainable. And then I was meeting various people who were doing it in quite a cheap way.” Later, she taught English in Japan for three years, where she saved enough money that the notion of living on a boat was getting closer to reality. When she returned home, aged 30, she had a yacht built for her. Kaewa.

“At the time, boats [to buy] weren't that cheap, so I still spent too much money on my boat, but an equivalent boat that was for sale was around 60 grand and now, the same sort of boat is probably 10 or 15 grand. I did lots of reading and decided on a small, traditional, gaff-rigged, timber yacht with nice lines. With hindsight, she is not the most practical boat for living aboard but I still love her.” Kaewa is now 20 years old.

There were more creations in the years following the boat build. Namely, a marriage and three kids. When the family shifted to the West Coast, she shelved her dream for a while but refused to sell the boat. A couple of years after the shift, her marriage ended. “My boat was down there because we'd taken it with us and put it in a farm shed, and it [the time] was just like, the worst of the worst of everything. So I thought, what will I do now? I was like, right. I don't know how, but I want to get back to living on my boat, so then I just worked towards that really slowly.”

Four years later, with Leo 10, Maea 8, and Marlo 5, they began a new life in the Marlborough Sounds.

Over the ten years the family based themselves in different parts of the Sounds – Picton, Havelock, Kenepuru Sounds and D’Urville Island. Locations were primarily motivated by work and the children’s social and home-schooling connections. Kerstin turned her hand to possum hunting, gardening, and kitchen hand, “Anything I could do that meant we could be out in the Sounds.”

“We were always parked somewhere, so we could always go ashore. Especially with the possum hunting. It worked well with that. Breakfast, get off, go check all the traps. Bring some snacks. Have some time just hanging out on the beach or in the bush, then back to the boat for lunch. If it was a nice day, the kids would be doing all sorts of stuff. And if it was a crappy day, we'd sit inside and do some maths workbooks or something.”

Kaewa was a boat built for two and as small as the kids were at the time, it was narrow and only eight metres in length. By the time Leo was 12, she had bought a $1,800 floating sleepout. A year later, and she’d bought another one for Maea. “It's just how it kind of evolved. I had planned for us all to be able to live on a little boat because who needs lots of space? Just don't have too much stuff, you know. And again, it just kind of worked. I was not at all loaded, but we just managed to find cheap boats.”

It was now a three-boat convoy when they moved bases, which wasn’t often. “The idea was to be based in a bay and then come and go with one of the boats. We joined the [Waikawa] Yacht Club, which meant we could use the club moorings for a few days at a time, when not on anchor. We'd come into town once every nine days or so and do our washing, go to the library and stock up on groceries.”

For a while they were going to athletics club meets once a week and at various times they had a horse, a cat, and chickens too. The horse wasn’t on the boat obviously, but the hens had their own dinghy. When they house-sat for a couple of months (their longest stint living on land in the ten years), there were hens to look after and the idea to have their own grew from that. “I had this old dinghy and I built a chicken coop on top. Mostly, we'd park them up on the high tide mark, and they would just range around and then come back to their house every night, as chickens do.” When moving bases she’d tow the chicken dinghy, with Leo’s and Maea’s boats in convoy.

Maea loves animals so the horse was for her and was grazed at properties of homeschooling friends, but eventually it went to a friend who could ride it more often.

Wherever the family went, it was driven by consensus. “We would try and agree on what everyone wanted to do and then see how we could make it happen. I'd sit down with the kids and say, right? Food, water, fuel. We had to see how we were going to tick off those things and work as well… If you planned it, it'd be completely nuts. But it was just one step at a time. I just knew I wanted to try and make it work as long as the kids were happy. I only did it because it's what they wanted to keep doing as much as I did.”

“I've always been willing to make do, because it means I can be out there. It means I can spend time with my kids growing up. So I've made do without a fridge on the boat, or stuff which costs money to install. But also [the more appliances you have] there's more things to go wrong that need fixing as well.”

Kerstin’s luxury items – toast and frozen peas. “We actually do make toast, but we just use a frying pan and make toasted sandwiches more. But just being able to pop toast in a toaster, that's a real treat. And because we were only doing trips to the supermarket once every six weeks, and we didn't have a freezer, we just didn't have frozen peas. Having access to a hot shower with never-ending hot water is an absolute treat. It's basically a tradeoff. It’s living with less luxury in exchange for having freedom.”

What about all the things that young people have access to when living in a community? “I always worried that they missed out on sports or music lessons or this and that. Then at some point, I just relaxed about it, thinking, well, it's not that they can't ever do those things. Some people try and do it all, and they get so stressed out about it. You've got to do what works for your family at the time and try and accommodate everyone, and then whatever they can't do at that time, they can do it later in life.”

With no option to compare, it’s impossible for Kerstin to know how a more conventional upbringing would have shaped them, but through the life they led, her three children are ‘quite capable, good at problem solving, and pretty resilient.’ Kerstin’s oldest son Leo has only ever been homeschooled. He’s now living and working in Picton and bought his own, larger boat. Maea is studying at NMIT in Nelson.  For the last 18 months, only Marlo,16, and Kerstin have been onboard.

Twenty years with the yacht, a decade living in the Sounds. Marlo will leave soon and then what? “I will stay on the boat. Definitely. I love the whole living aboard thing, but I'm not a mad keen sailor particularly. I enjoy being in nice places, which I can do with a boat. I could never afford to buy a house with a nice view out in the Sounds somewhere. I get really itchy feet and want to go travelling and stuff, but I don't know if I actually will. Initially, it was a real challenge to see if we could do it, and that motivated me. Whereas now, there's not the issue of trying to prove we can do it.”

Kerstin also never tires of living in the natural world. “I just love how much in contact you are with nature when living aboard. I love paddling out to the boat at night and often there's bioluminescence everywhere, or fish are jumping, and you see most people in their houses with the lights on, the TV on. I’m like, man, they’re missing out. Some people don't even know this is here, and it's just magical.”