The Congers, who departed Elliott Bay Marina in May of 2008 for a life at sea, have planted roots, temporarily, in New Zealand.
The quintet, Dean and Karen with children, Jaime, Mera and Aeron, had been leading a relatively normal life in Seattle until Dean said he no longer wanted to practice dentistry.
So they packed up their catamaran, Don Quixote, and headed out to sea, first to Vancouver Island and then down to the southern coast of Mexico. But even after temporary returns to Seattle and a life on land, the family had been bitten by the sea bug and are now residents of New Zealand. Coincidentally, no other city resembles Seattle as much as Auckland, they said.
Karen Conger, who writes the family's blog, said, for now anyway, that they cannot extract themselves from this new life - even regular education in the New Zealand school system isn't cutting it. Below is an excerpt from a letter Karen Conger sent to The News, which has been keeping in touch with the family's progress.
Notes from New Zealand
The kids are going mad in a regular public school. Education is very important to Kiwis, mate. They take it very seriously. I'd say the schools here are on average as good or better than the average U.S. school. The teaching methodology is more inquiry based with less text books. Lots of cooperative projects, etc. However, their academics at the high school level is increasingly driven by a testing regime very similar to the WASL. I don't see this as a positive direction, personally.
The problem is that after the life the girls have been leading-the home-school experience we've had both in Seattle and aboard-public school just moves too slowly. They take six hours to cover what the girls can do in one. The rest of the day is filled with make work that my children find innervating.
Their experience also matured them considerably faster than normal children. They have spent more time with adults and with children across the entire age range and so have a strong appreciation for the value of individuals regardless of age. As a result, my children do not have much patience with the insular and rather ageist attitudes of most children. They don't take as much pleasure in traditional pursuits such as television or electronic games either. It leaves them a bit "out of
it."
As for New Zealand, I would be hard pressed to find a city more like Seattle anywhere in the world than Auckland. People from Ballard would feel right at home here in Ponsonby, a city suburb within throwing distance of central business district. If I took a picture of the average street here, the only way you'd know you were in New Zealand rather than home is the cars are all on the wrong side of the road. It's really nice here, but it's so much like home that we almost feel like we've gone back.
About cruising for those dreaming
• Plan your exit strategy - e.g. someday you're going to run out of money and have to move back to land. We found this really challenging. We ended up living in the back of beyond (farm country in New Zealand as far from Auckland as we could get and still work in the city). The high stress of the Real World was impossible to move back into directly from the cruising life.
• If you own a cruising cat like ours, the market is the same as for houses in the quarter million dollar range but considerably WORSE. Very difficult to sell a boat. Don't count on it.
• You might not be fit to go back to real life. We aren't. We've tried it for a year, and the entire family has decided that we don't like it. We've basically taken DQ off the market and are now planning for our further adventures. We will be even more insane, more poor (poorer? broke?), but we know that real life isn't for us any longer
• Home schooling makes your children unfit for regular school. The problem isn't socialization or inability to keep up with the schools. The problem is boredom. My children are going insane with boredom in regular school.[[In-content Ad]]
