Some time ago, while daydreaming about tossing out my to-do list and becoming a Buddhist nun or a berry farmer, I signed up for a newsletter called New Escapologist, which advocates freeing oneself from “the overbearing world of work, consumerism, and anxiety.” The June edition included the story of a couple who met on a cruise ship, sold all of their belongings, and embarked on back-to-back voyages. Soon afterward, I watched a short documentary, “The Happiest Guy in the World,” from 2018, about a man who’d been on cruises continuously for nineteen years. I also read news stories about a voyage called the Odyssey, a cruise that started in 2024, and that was never supposed to end.I posted a message on cruisecritic.com, the largest online cruise-reviewing platform, explaining that I wanted to talk to people who had decided to live at sea indefinitely. In July, Starr Davis, a retiree from Florida who was living aboard the Odyssey, e-mailed me. “I heard you were looking to find people who sold everything to do life on board,” she wrote. “Well, that’s me!” When we talked, by phone, she was in Thailand and her voice was chipper and clear. She told me that since 2024 the Odyssey had already taken her to dozens of countries, and that during excursions in East Asia, she’d taken advantage of inexpensive medical care. She talked as if she’d found the ultimate retirement hack, and said that I could visit her on the ship, if I liked. Of her fellow-passengers, she said, “We’ll be friends for life.”Around the same time, however, I got a cryptic e-mail about the Odyssey from someone who asked to remain unnamed. “It is quite important to at least allude to current issues and risks,” the e-mail said. Positive coverage of the Villa Vie Residences, the Florida-based company that launched the Odyssey, might “jeopardize the finances of your readers by falsely creating the impression that VVR is a secure, low risk cruise line.” The tipster warned that a small number of enthusiastic residents tend to appear over and over in media coverage, skewing public perceptions. This person was not a resident of the ship but claimed to have been harassed on Facebook by a co-founder of Villa Vie. When I searched for the company there, I quickly found a very active group devoted to discussing it.The Facebook group had its own lexicon. High-profile residents had nicknames such as “the pirate” and “the mermaid.” Villa Vie’s co-founders, Mikael Petterson and Kathy Villalba, were “the Florida Couple.” I found A.I.-generated images that depicted the Odyssey as a kind of floating dictatorship in which “leakers” were punished for telling the truth. On August 1st, my anonymous source e-mailed me again: “Very disturbing insider news occurring right now on Odyssey in Singapore.” It seemed that the ship was supposed to have left the country, according to its itinerary, but Villalba, via a Zoom call from Florida, was asking passengers for more than a million dollars—thousands of dollars per person—in order to buy fuel. Residents were booing her. The ship’s internet had been shut off; it was unclear whether the crew was being paid.When I e-mailed Davis, asking her about the fuel issues and delays, she replied, “We are sailing now. Yeah!!!” But she told me that she was getting off the ship for a while, to do some tours on land. I started to check the Facebook page every morning, and I sent direct messages to several passengers, but I didn’t hear back. Then, on a Friday evening in September, I was at a brewery in Brooklyn when an e-mail popped up on my phone with a curious subject line: “Villa Vie Odyssey is sinking.” The sender, Toni Trombecky, owned a cabin on the vessel but had left the ship after the Singapore debacle. “I’m one of the few that didn’t sign the NDA so I don’t mind talking about it,” she wrote. I was puzzled. Why would a residential cruise ask residents to sign a nondisclosure agreement?Soon, I heard from Wade Rand, another resident who had recently left. He told me that my inquiries had caused a stir on board. Residents had been informed that anyone talking to a journalist would, in his words, “incur severe wrath.” One morning, I found an A.I.-generated image of me in the Facebook group. Details from my résumé had apparently been scraped from the internet, and commenters were debating my intentions. I mentioned to Rand that I hoped to visit the ship. “At this point, it may be impossible to get on the ship except undercover,” he replied. “It could be dangerous even. Apparently . . . everyone knows who you are.”Before Petterson and Villalba founded Villa Vie, they worked for a failed cruise-ship venture called Life at Sea. In 2022, Petterson, a former financial planner for cruise companies who described himself on his résumé as a “cruise start-up entrepreneur,” dreamed of a cruise that would last longer than any other. He signed a contract with Miray Cruises, a Turkish company, to develop and market Life at Sea, which would offer a three-year voyage with stops at hundreds of ports. The story attracted widespread news coverage, and more than half of the cabins were reserved within a month. Rates started at ninety thousand dollars for interior cabins and just under a million for a suite. (The most successful multiyear residential cruise, the World, has been sailing for more than two decades; it operates essentially as a nonprofit co-owned by ultra-rich passengers, who pay millions for cabins that can be as large as town houses. “The only thing that’s similar between the World and a cruise ship is they float on the water,” one resident said in 2024.)Many of Life at Sea’s customers invested significant portions of their savings into the cruise; some sold their homes. But Petterson’s relationship with Miray deteriorated. He told the New York Times that the head of the company owned a pizza parlor and wanted him to route customer deposits into its bank account, because Miray Cruises didn’t have an account in the United States. (The company said this was a temporary solution.) Petterson left the company shortly before passengers travelled to Istanbul to board the three-year cruise; there, they learned that a deal for the ship had fallen through. Miray then cancelled the voyage altogether. A year later, some passengers were still trying to get their money back. Miray did not respond to requests for comment.Petterson didn’t want to give up on his concept, however. He attacked Miray online, and the company sued him for tortious interference and defamation. (The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed.) He announced that he was working on his next project, Villa Vie Residences: “With total transparency and integrity, we will make the dream come true stronger, better than anything else on the market today. Stay tuned explorers.” Villalba, his romantic partner and colleague, joined him as a co-founder and the C.E.O. of Villa Vie. Public records show that both of them had declared bankruptcy in the past; Petterson had done so only a few years before.The Odyssey was advertised as the “first truly affordable residential World Cruise.” In March, 2024, one couple paid a hundred and seventy-nine thousand dollars to buy a cabin. For an additional maintenance fee of six thousand dollars a month, which was supposed to hold steady in perpetuity, they would both receive three meals a day, housekeeping and laundry services, basic medical attention, and wine or beer at every meal—forever. Passengers who paid more up front would not owe a monthly fee. “There are no surprise costs going forward,” Petterson told Fox Business.A former employee of Villa Vie told me that Petterson was a skilled public speaker who appeared to know what he was talking about, but that his business plan “seemed like a guesstimate.” The former employee remembered Petterson and Villalba saying that, as long as the Odyssey sold out of cabins, the business would be financially sustainable. The employee worried that they were “really just trying to wing a multimillion-dollar project.” Still, the company managed to purchase and retrofit a four-hundred-and-eighty-five-cabin ship that had been built in 1993.The Odyssey was scheduled to set sail in May, 2024, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, with a portion of the cabins filled. Claude Sadovsky, a retired emergency-medicine physician from Illinois, was one of the passengers who travelled to the area before departure. He’d previously put down a small deposit with Life at Sea, which was refunded, and he’d paid a hundred thousand dollars for an interior cabin on the Odyssey. But residents soon learned that the departure would be delayed for repairs, and because of problems with the ship’s certifications. The Odyssey needed a new rudder stock, a vertical metal shaft that helps with steering, but when the rudder arrived staff members didn’t seem to know how to install it. An expert was called in. “The first thing the expert said is, ‘Why are you trying to fit it horizontally when it’s going to sit vertically?’ ” Sadovsky told me. Another incoming passenger, Jenny Phenix, complained in a WhatsApp group about the setbacks. Villa Vie informed her that her contract for a cabin was cancelled. Phenix is currently suing the company in U.S. district court.The Odyssey finally departed in early October of 2024. It was different from other cruises that Sadovsky had been on. Residents were invited to give PowerPoint presentations on topics of their choice; a retired forensic psychologist gave a lecture on nature versus nurture, and a retired coroner spoke about resuscitation. The furnishings were simple and the pool seemed to be closed for maintenance just as often as it was open. The food was decent, but not decadent, with a rotating menu that frequently repeated. And yet Sadovsky started to have a wonderful time. He was meeting people and seeing the world. The itinerary changed constantly; Villa Vie eliminated about half of the ship’s planned stops in Alaska, instead spending ten days sailing back and forth along the coast, and the Galápagos Islands had to be skipped because ships with more than a hundred people couldn’t stop there. But Sadovsky grew to appreciate the chance to visit lesser-known spots. At one point, over dinner with some fellow-residents, he realized that he’d gladly pay twice the twenty-five hundred dollars a month that he was being charged. “That’s what I think the value of this thing is,” he told me. If anything, his worry was that he wasn’t paying enough. “How could you guarantee that you will never raise the monthly rate?” Sadovsky said.When Toni Trombecky retired from a federal-government job, thirteen years ago, she and her husband moved to Las Vegas. They liked to travel, but as they got older long flights were harder to recover from. She was thrilled when she read about the Odyssey online. “You don’t have to pack your bags,” Trombecky told me. “And your whole neighborhood goes with you.” The couple spent a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on a fifteen-year contract for a porthole cabin, and in January, 2026, they boarded the ship in Australia. After eight weeks, they upgraded to a large-window cabin, for an additional twenty thousand dollars. Their room was only a hundred and forty square feet, but Trombecky thought of the Odyssey’s two restaurants as her dining room and the ship’s library as a living room. There were onboard exercise classes and games. She bought wallpaper, furniture, and new tile for the cabin. Fellow-passengers often invited her and her husband to join them for meals. “This was not a vacation,” she said. “It’s a life style.”Trombecky told me that Villalba, who came on board periodically, had a gentle manner and seemed conflict-averse. When Trombecky and her husband upgraded rooms, they asked for the perks that had come with their first room. “We’ll let you keep them, but don’t tell Mike,” Trombecky remembered Villalba saying. But the former employee said that Villalba had a temper, and that she occasionally complained about guests to her employees. A couple of months after Trombecky boarded, Villalba announced that a temporary fifteen-hundred-dollar fuel surcharge would be added to monthly fees. Israel and the U.S. had recently launched a war on Iran, and oil prices were sharply up. Residents pushed back; they had been promised set rates. Villalba soon apologized and said that the fuel surcharge was voluntary. Tensions emerged between those who did and did not pay, however. A resident told me that the ship was like “junior high school during spirit week.” Trombecky, who paid, said that a neighbor hung a flyer that said, “We paid—how about you?”Petterson and Villalba blamed the media for negative news coverage of Villa Vie, especially after the delay in Belfast. The ship’s viability depended on sales, which weren’t going as well as planned. Facebook allows users to flag harassment, hate speech, spam, and misinformation; Villalba started to flag groups and posts that discussed Villa Vie in an unfavorable light. Some residents were on her side and referred to the Facebook group I’d found as a hate group. Villalba facilitated a separate Facebook group called Mythbusters, but it became inactive after Villalba complained bitterly about leaks. “Every leak narrows what can be shared next time,” she wrote. “That’s not karma. It’s cause and effect.” A travel journalist wrote in Cruise News about the odd air of censorship on board: “Sometimes I’d feel like Bob Woodward meeting with a Watergate informant in an underground parking garage as a resident whispered his or her disappointment.” A resident told me that some passengers started checking others’ phones in search of alleged leakers.Passengers who had invested extra money up front had special status as “Founders,” and each tier had a designated color. “Black” members had paid three hundred and fifty thousand dollars; “Gold,” a hundred thousand; and “Silver,” twenty-five thousand. A resident who requested anonymity told me that Petterson and Villalba shared more updates on the status of the ship with the Founders. After they began to suspect that one of the Silver Founders was a leaker, however, they cut the entire Silver cohort out of the loop. “We knew that there was a financial incentive for everyone to be quiet if we were going to attract more people to the cruise ship,” the resident said. “I do feel a little bit, like, Should we have been bigger whistle-blowers all along? Probably. But they had turned the community so against each other that if you were a whistle-blower, the other passengers would have made your life miserable. You would have had to leave.”Trombecky told me that, as Villa Vie’s money issues became increasingly evident, the subject became as taboo as “politics and religion. “You didn’t talk about it,” she said. In April of this year, Villa Vie taped letters to the door of each cabin, asking for emergency loans and promising between twelve and twenty-four per-cent interest in return. Trombecky gave fifty thousand dollars. When the first interest deadline arrived, however, she wasn’t paid. At the end of July, she left the ship for a friend’s wedding, in Bali, and while she was gone she heard about the fateful meeting in Singapore. After passengers signed the N.D.A.s, Villalba, via Zoom, told them that the ship could be detained on behalf of creditors if they did not contribute. There was apparently no money left for fuel, provisions, or crew salaries.A passenger with Founder status, Shirene Thomas, told me that they had been getting such requests since early in the voyage. “I don’t think we ever went two or three months” without one, Thomas said. Because the money covered basics such as hot water and air-conditioning, Founders felt pressure to help their fellow-passengers. At one point, a Founder paid off a Starlink bill so that internet service could be restored. I spoke with a passenger who had attempted to tally up all the extra money that residents had contributed during the trip; the figure was easily in the tens of millions. Villa Vie Residences did not respond to repeated requests for comment.In Singapore, the residents came up with the money in two days, but Trombecky and her husband decided to give up thousands of dollars in belongings and leave. “We just felt like we’re throwing good money after bad here,” she told me. According to Trombecky and to passenger contracts that I reviewed, Villa Vie had guaranteed that it would buy back cabins at a reduced rate. When Trombecky invoked this policy, however, she was told that the program was suspended.The Odyssey managed to sail to Hong Kong and then to H? Long Bay, in Vietnam. In early September, at another emergency meeting, Villalba, on Zoom, asked passengers for even more money. “She was crying,” Susan O’Brien, a ballroom-dance instructor who was working on board told me. She remembered Villalba saying, “This is my baby, and you don’t know what I’ve been through.” According to O’Brien, one passenger stood up and yelled to the crowd, “Do you want the whole ship to go bankrupt? Because if that happens, we all lose.”In late September, I received a surprise WhatsApp message from Villalba, whom I had yet to contact. She’d heard about my outreach. “Villa Vie has had an extraordinary couple of years . . . some wonderful chapters and some extremely difficult ones,” she said. “If you’re writing about us, I’d rather give you the opportunity to see the ship for yourself.” We discussed a visit while the Odyssey was docked in Ho Chi Minh City, but then Villalba backtracked: Vietnamese regulations would not allow visitors on board the ship. She said that I could come aboard for lunch in Bangkok but then declined a Zoom meeting, citing the time difference. When I followed up, she said that she was “slammed” and asked to talk when she was back in the U.S. I continued to reach out, and she delayed each time. Finally, she sent me a screenshot from what looked like a WhatsApp group of residents. Trombecky was asking others if they wanted to speak with a journalist. “Is this your story?” Villalba said. I didn’t hear from her again, not even when I e-mailed her a list of detailed questions about the cruise.On September 30th, the passengers who remained on the ship celebrated two years of sailing. “Many doubted she’d ever make it out of Belfast,” a resident wrote about the Odyssey on Facebook. “201 ports, and 2 years later, she’s still sailing.” He also shared a photo of a “Happy Anniversary” sheet cake. At the beginning of October, there were rumors that Oneil Khosa, a hotel-and-banking entrepreneur, was considering an investment in the ship. Residents were hopeful that he might offer an influx of cash. But Petterson wrote to residents that discussions had effectively ended. In a separate message, Villalba wrote, “I will readily admit that we underestimated the financial demands of this venture. We wanted to make residential cruising affordable. Looking back, we made it too affordable.” The ship’s monthly operating costs were exceeding its revenues from fees by more than two million dollars a month, she said. As usual, she requested money. This time, though, residents were reluctant to contribute.On the evening of October 26th, the ship’s hotel manager, Rodrigo Lopes, addressed passengers in an announcement that eventually ended up on YouTube. He noted that residents had been forming groups that could theoretically take over ownership. “Guys, it doesn’t matter,” Lopes said of these plans. “If there is no resolution by Tuesday, all residents will be asked to leave the ship.” Passengers spent Monday night emptying their liquor cabinets at a ship-wide party. They gathered at the bar and in the dining rooms. They hugged one another and danced. On Tuesday morning, they received the final notice from Villalba. The roughly two hundred residents who were left had to disembark at an industrial port on the outskirts of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, by 2:00 P.M. In a press release from Villa Vie, the company blamed rising fuel prices for the demise of the cruise. Yet many residents I spoke to rejected this claim. The company was also in debt to COLUMBIA Cruise Services, which paid the crew; VIKAND, which provided medical staff; various provisioning companies; port authorities; internet providers; and, of course, to the passengers who had loaned the ship money.On the day of disembarkation, shuttle buses pulled up alongside the Odyssey and passengers shuffled out. Each shuttle seated sixteen, but many of the seats filled up with luggage. Dana Teton, a seventy-one-year-old passenger who had been renting from the owner of a cabin, felt grateful that he’d lost only eleven thousand dollars. One of his friends had bought into the Endless Horizons program, paying three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to secure a cabin for life. When the Odyssey stopped sailing, the friend had spent less than a month on the ship. “Anybody who contributed money might as well have taken a Zippo lighter and just set it on fire,” Teton said. Villa Vie had been trying to sell cabins up until passengers disembarked, and many people who had purchased one never even got a chance to board. Desley Thomas, who had already booked her travel and paid for a four-and-a-half-year contract, was supposed to start her voyage in early November. She found out about the Odyssey’s demise on Facebook.As of early November, some crew members were still on board. According to passengers, some had not been paid in weeks. Teton talked to a senior crew member who said that many hadn’t been given transportation off the ship or help with their visas. Passengers also heard that the air-conditioning and much of the power were shut off. Villa Vie said in the press release that it would attempt to restructure its debt. In a message to residents, Petterson wrote that the ship was now under the control of a lender. It would be moved to Singapore, where it might be sold. But he was still looking for a way to regain authority. “It’s not like you get your car repossessed and you can’t get it back,” he told CBS. He did not respond to e-mails from The New Yorker.Before Trombecky boarded the Odyssey, she had sold her house. On the day she left the ship, in Singapore, a crew member asked her where she would go. She started to cry. She’d expected to spend the rest of her life on board. “I was going to throw my ashes out to sea,” she said. She and her husband were able to afford a new house and car in Las Vegas, near family, and for this she considers herself lucky. “There are a lot of retired women who have put their entire retirement savings into this ship,” she said. “Not only do they not have anywhere else to go; they don’t have the money. The ship has taken it all.”Thomas, the passenger with Founder status, had lived on the ship with two cats since 2024. After disembarking, she and her cats checked into a hotel near the port in Cambodia, along with other passengers. Some residents will continue travelling in East Asia by land, she said, and others will go home—if they have one. Thomas had given up her place in Wilmington, North Carolina, to participate in Petterson’s previous cruise-ship venture, Life at Sea. When she decided to invest in a cabin on the Odyssey, a friend asked her, “Why would you put your faith in something like this again? Haven’t you been burned already?” She replied, “I’ve already lost everything. There’s nothing more to lose.” Thomas wasn’t sure what her next destination would be. While she made up her mind, she was spending time sitting by the hotel’s infinity pool, which had a view of the Cambodian coast. She could see the Odyssey in the distance. ?