A year at sea: The reality of living on a permanent cruise

A year ago, Sharon Lane stepped onto the residential cruise ship Villa Vie Odyssey, ready to embark on an adventure.

This was no week-long cruise, nor even a month-long sea sojourn. For Lane, the 195-metre, eight-deck ship was to become her permanent place of residence.

"I'm not on a trip," Lane told CNN Travel via video call from the ship, a year after her departure. "This is our home. This is where we live."

Villa Vie Odyssey is not an ordinary cruise ship. It's a "residential" vessel, meaning passengers can purchase cabins and live on the ship full-time. For Lane, this is a "forever" plan. She aims to continue living on board for as long as the ship is operational. Though recently renovated, the vessel has three decades of service behind it. Last year, the cruise company estimated the ship had 15 years of seafaring left.

"This is a home," said Lane. "I'm just living on and loving the ship."

Home on the ocean

Operated by the cruise startup Villa Vie Residences, the Odyssey set sail under its new guise for the first time in September 2024 after a bumpy start: an earlier long-term cruise plan collapsed before a vessel could be secured, followed by a series of pre-departure delays.

Lane joined the ship in June 2025, after the initial operational challenges had mostly been ironed out. For former school teacher Lane, the Odyssey is a retirement plan. She did the math and figured living on the ship was more affordable — and far more exciting — than remaining at home in California. She's always loved travelling and lived in South Africa for two years in the 1990s. She became a cruise convert because she loves the feeling of being adrift at sea.

Lane, who is in her late 70s, stays in touch with family - including her two adult grandsons - from afar. She enjoys having a built-in community on the ship, which she can easily opt out of when she wants solo time. Due to the vessel's size, she's always able to find a quiet space to get lost in a book.

Lane poured her life savings into the plan, initially opting for the cheapest option: an interior, windowless cabin.

"I don't spend a lot of time in my room," Lane said.

Villa Vie Residences told CNN that five-year cabin ownership starts at approximately NZ$106,000. Full ownership prices start at approximately NZ$177,000. There are various other occupancy plans.

Owners also pay monthly fees, which in 2025 worked out as approximately NZ$3,545 per person per month for double occupancy, and approximately NZ$5,303 for single occupancy.

Prices have fluctuated since the ship initially set sail, and the project gained momentum. There are also discounted rates for older passengers.

"We've also expanded rental opportunities," Villa Vie Residences' CEO Mikael Petterson told CNN, explaining that the option allows "more people to experience life onboard before deciding whether ownership is right for them."

Still, the majority of those onboard are there for the long haul, according to Petterson.

"Owners outnumber renters about 3 to 1 currently," he told CNN. Just over half of those on board are solo travellers, like Lane.

And while the prices of a Villa Vie's cabin aren't cheap, they remain comparatively accessible in contrast to The World, the only other residential cruise ship experience currently at sea, which caters to a more upscale market with a current starting price of US$3.5 million (approximately NZ$6.19 million). There are other residential ship projects in the works — such as NJORD, a self-described "exclusive community at sea" — but they've yet to be realised.

On board, food and soft drinks are included in residents' monthly fees. So is alcohol at dinner, Wi-Fi and medical visits (but not procedures and medicines). There's also a round-the-clock room service, weekly housekeeping, and bi-weekly laundry service at no extra cost.

And, of course, those on board get to circumnavigate the globe, stopping off at ports from Tokyo to Hawaii. Port excursions are optional and incur extra fees.

In the Odyssey's first few months sailing, Villa Vie contended with some cancelled port calls, which Pettersen blamed on weather, as well as red tape and logistical problems in destinations where smaller tender vessels are needed to carry passengers ashore.

Villa Vie subsequently built custom walkways to link the ship and tender boats, designed to reduce movement from waves and swell.

These walkways are now in active use by the Odyssey.

"They do take up to four hours to set up and four hours to disassemble so we only deploy them when we are at anchor for multiple days and with good weather conditions," Pettersen said. "We will increasingly use them in tropical anchor ports like the Maldives."

Life on board

In between ports, there's plenty for residents to enjoy on the ship - from official onboard entertainment to passenger-organised fun, including amateur theatre productions.

Some Odyssey residents work remotely from the boat. Many chronicle their adventures on social media or blogs. There are even travelling pets on board.

Lane opts out of a lot of the organised fun on offer, as it's not to her personal taste, but she loves chatting to the array of interesting people who also call the Odyssey home.

"Dinner lasts a long time here, because we use mealtime as social time, so you sit with people and you eat your meal, and you take an hour and a half, maybe two hours," she said.

"Some people go to karaoke, or they go see a movie, or they go dancing, or they go to a play, and I don't. That's not me … There are people who've been trying to get me into playing bridge, but I have absolutely, positively zero interest in playing bridge."

Still, for a while Lane enjoyed the ship's weekly trivia nights — and she is occasionally tempted by a movie. She begins her day with 10 minutes on the treadmill in the Odyssey's gym, enjoying the views of open water. Right now, Lane's evening project is learning Spanish online. Lane also spent much of the last year getting her cabin exactly as she wanted it — because it's a long-term arrangement, there was no rush to get the space perfect.

Lane also moved cabins after two months, after finding a better deal on board, with a price adjusted for her age.

Her current cabin is an upgrade - unlike her original space, it has windows. While she sold many of her possessions before boarding the ship, she has enjoyed making the space homely.

"I didn't see any reason to rush it," Lane said of making the space her own. "I wanted to settle into the ship, figure out how things worked, find a routine to my life."

This included finding a favourite spot on the ship. After testing multiple lounging spaces, Lane eventually settled on a comfy chair in one of the Odyssey's hallways, right between the sports bar and the business centre.

"There's a light above your head for your book, and there are these huge windows - giant windows all the way across - so you can actually, literally, watch the ocean go by," Lane said. "So, I read my book, and I look out, and I enjoy the scenery. I like it, especially on sea days, because you see the ocean really moving by."

Lane doesn't often get off the ship — she chose a cruise ship as a home more because she loves the sea views than because she loves exploring new ports. She's also cautious about travelling from the ship to ports via tenders, due to a long-term back injury that she worries could be aggravated by the motion of the waves.

Still, sometimes there's something on land Lane feels is "calling my name", and she cannot resist getting off for a peek. In Japan, Lane visited Mount Fuji, though she calls the excursion "a bust", due to rain and cloud obscuring views.

When Lane does step off the ship, her favourite moments aren't seeing incredible sights — they're the incidental, yet memorable interactions with locals.

"We were in Hobart, Australia, and I went to a little hole-in-the-wall ‘mom and pop' hardware store," she said, recalling chatting with the owners for some time.

"We're just living life and seeing that people on the other side of the world are pretty much just like us, and I just love that, the culture part, seeing how people live and seeing what we have in common. It was fun. It was no big deal, except I won't forget it, because it was just nice."

On board the ship, Lane also enjoys connecting with people from different places. Petterson said 80 percent of Villa Vie Odyssey's owners are from the United States and Canada, with Australia and New Zealand a close second, calling the ship "a thriving global community".

Lane recalls one dinner time bonding with an Aussie couple and a Scottish couple about their mutual love of crime fiction. She was delighted to realise they all shared a favourite author.

People who boarded the ship at the same port and on the same date are forever bonded, too, according to Lane.

"It's like graduating from high school — we have the same graduation day, except we graduated from land-based to ocean-based," she joked.

For Lane, the hardest part of on-board living is that not everyone is on board permanently, and sometimes she'll grow close with people who then disembark the ship. Still, she stays in touch with many of her former shipmates, including one good friend who spent a stint on the ship before returning home to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

"She's planning to meet us again to come back on the ship next year when we do Europe, so I'll be able to see her then, and we do FaceTime," Lane said.

While some residents come and go, Lane says you can usually distinguish between the folks who see the Odyssey as a vacation destination and those in it for the long haul.

"You can tell where their head is by how they refer to ‘home,'" she said. For Lane, home is no longer California. It's wherever the Odyssey is currently on the world map.

Not worrying about chores is 'heaven'

After a year on board, Lane still hasn't missed making a meal for herself - and she definitely does not mourn laundry and cleaning. No longer worrying about chores is "heaven", she said.

In general, Lane says she feels "removed from the real world" - and that's the way she likes it.

"If the real world is driving a car to the gas station and seeing the prices are huge now, if the real world is going to the supermarket and standing in a long line, if the real world is paying bills, and worrying about what's happening in places, then no, thank you," she said.

That doesn't mean Lane and her fellow Odyssey residents don't keep up with world news.

"We're paying attention, and we keep each other informed when things are happening," she said, pointing out residents all have friends and family across the world, affected by geopolitics.

The ongoing fallout from the Iran war — closing airspace, waterways and upping fuel prices — has also impacted the Odyssey directly.

"We've had to remain flexible and occasionally adjust routes or port calls based on global events," explained Petterson, who noted that the company is attempting to create more flexible itineraries, which can better accommodate unpredictable events.

Lane called fuel prices and shortages "a major concern", but said she's been pleased to see Villa Vie attempt workarounds.

"Without fuel, we're not moving, so that's important," she said. "We don't always like everything that we see, but we can't really change it ourselves individually, so try not to worry about it."

"Fortunately, our residential model allows us greater flexibility to optimise routes and time in port, helping us manage costs while maintaining the voyage," Pettersen said.

Dream life

Lane marked her first anniversary on the ship with dinner with her fellow one-yearers.

"Many had dinner together," she said. "There was also a ship-wide announcement wishing us all a happy anniversary."

A year on, Lane said she feels happier than ever. Her time on the Odyssey was a long time coming — she also signed up to the initial residential cruise concept that fell apart before it got off the ground.

"I believed in it then, and I believe in it now," Lane said of permanent ocean living. "We have a glitch with the fuel they're handling. We've had a couple other little glitches. They handle it. We work it out, we figure it out, because this is new."

For Lane, this is the dream life.

"This is for people who want a slower pace, a way to see the world but live with fewer responsibilities," she said.

"If I won the lottery, I would simply buy the cabin next to mine, open a door between the two cabins, and turn that one into a closet."

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