Passengers bought berths on a 3-year cruise. Months on, the ship is still stuck in Belfast
Passengers who bought cabins for a 3 1/2-year round-the-world cruise have been waiting months for the vessel to depart
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Your support makes all the difference.Lanette Canen and Johan Bodin gave up life on land to become seaborne nomads on a years-long cruise.
Months later, the couple has yet to spend a night at sea. Their ship, the Odyssey, is stuck in Belfast undergoing repair work that has postponed its scheduled May departure for a 3 ½-year round-the-world voyage.
Bodin said they have enjoyed their pit stop in the Northern Ireland capital, but “when we’d visited every pub and tried and every fish and chips place and listened to all the places that have Irish music, then we were ready to go elsewhere.”
“We’re ready to set sail, for sure,” added Canen.
Villa Vie Residences’ Odyssey is the latest venture in the tempest-tossed world of continuous cruising.
It offers travelers the chance to buy a cabin and live at sea on a ship circumnavigating the globe. On its maiden voyage, it is scheduled to visit 425 ports in 147 countries on seven continents. Cabins – billed as “villas” — start at $99,999, plus a monthly fee, for the operational life of the vessel, at least 15 years. Passengers can also sign up for segments of the voyage lasting weeks or months.
Marketing material, aimed at adventurous retirees and restless digital nomads, touts “the incredible opportunity to own a home on a floating paradise,” complete with a gym, spa, putting green, entertainment facilities, a business center and an “experiential culinary center.”
But first, the Odyssey has to get out of the dock.
It’s now at Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard, where the doomed RMS Titanic was built more than a century ago.
Villa Vie Residences’ marketing manager Sebastian Stokkendal said the company had been “humbled by the scale of what it takes to reactivate a 30-year-old vessel from a four-year layup.”
He said that after work on the rudder shafts, steel work and engine overhauls, the ship is almost ready to depart.
“We expect a very anticipated successful launch next week where we will head to Bremerhaven, Amsterdam, Lisbon, then across the Atlantic for our Caribbean segment,” he said in an email to The Associated Press.
In the meantime, the company has been paying living expenses for about 200 passengers. They are allowed onto the ship during the day and provided with meals and entertainment, but can’t stay overnight. The cruise line has paid for hotels in Belfast and in other European cities for those who want to explore more of Europe while they wait.
Passenger Holly Hennessey from Florida told the BBC she can’t leave Northern Ireland because of her shipmate – her cat, Captain.
She said that at first “I thought I’d go home, or the ship sent some people to the Canary Islands. And then I found out that because I have my cat with me, I can’t even leave.”
“I want to thank Belfast for being so welcoming to all of us,” she said.
Bodin and Canen – a Swede and an American who met when both lived in Hawaii -- have used the time to travel to Italy, Croatia and Bodin's hometown in Sweden.
Canen plans to run her Arizona-based auto-glass business from the ship. Bodin, a carpenter, is running a YouTube channel documenting the couple’s temporarily stalled journey.
Canen and Bodin put down a deposit on Life at Sea – they got their money back – and also gambled on Victoria Cruises, another stalled venture from which they are still seeking a refund.
But they are undeterred.
“We might be crazy, stupid, naive or resilient,” Bodin said. “I don’t know, you can put any label on it that you want.”
Built in 1993 and operated under different names by several cruise lines over the years before being becalmed by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the ship was bought by Villa Vie Residences in 2023.
The residential cruising business has proved a troubled one. MS The World, launched in 2002, is currently the only vessel of the type in operation. Another venture, Life at Sea, canceled its planned 3-year voyage late last year after failing to secure a ship.
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Lawless reported from London.