The First 90 Days

90 days of sailing. What an interesting way to measure time and life. But then, measuring time is confounding. Measuring life is something I can get into, though.

In some ways we started our sailing trip with life in Belfast. That time gave us the opportunity to unwind from Las Vegas life and uprooting life twice in nine months. By the time we moved aboard Odyssey, we had a pretty mellow attitude about our upcoming adventures.

Sleeping

Transitioning from land-based living to sea-based living was interesting. I took right to sleeping on the ship. No traffic, alarms, or airplanes disturbed the silence. The air quality improved drastically, according to the monitor I bought in Vegas, much to my relief. No more snotty mornings for me! And the gently rolling and bobbing was soothing.

In contrast, there have been noise, air quality, and movement issues. The HVAC in our cabin is noisy, beyond white noise — even with earplugs — it’s a constant whooshing sound. Our cabin steward had several solutions that we played with to get the degree of cool we needed and the least amount of noise. Various sized leaks around the ship have caused at least musty, if not down-right moldy, conditions that impact my breathing and lung health; I’m learning to avoid some areas of the ship because of that, and hopefully those areas will improve.

The gentle rolling and bobbing turns to rocking and rolling some nights, leading to different sounds in the cabin; the thud of my water bottles hitting the floor and my necklaces swinging and clanking against each other are the most prominent sounds; added padding or securing those items helped a lot. It’s all part of adjusting to sea living.

Weather

I went from wearing long sleeves, layers, and my Irish wool sweater to wearing short-sleeved shirts, and even buying a sun dress to deal with the higher temperatures and humidity once we got to the tropics. The high humidity and temperatures are unpleasant for me so I found I retreated into the air conditioning of the cabin. You can imagine my delight when I woke up the morning we were approaching Peru to find a chilly air. The humidity was still high, which I can tell based on the frizz of my hair, but the layers I chose to put on mitigated that drawback. As I write this, a heavy fog has set in, adding to the feel of a cooler, damper day.

I’m among the small group of people who doesn’t feel the need to go explore every day at every port. I figured I’d go ashore at least once in every port, if even for a bit. The longer we’ve sailed the less inclined I am to go into every port, especially if the port has a reputation for danger or the weather is hot and muggy.

It’s fun to see how different groups have formed in that department. Some go out and explore every time we are docked, some hardly ever go ashore. That difference was highlighted during our seven-day Atlantic crossing; cabin fever seemed to strike hardest on the people who had the highest need to get off the ship at every port.

As our journey progressed, I noticed I did less of the hiking and exploring than I expected. Some of that is due to the ports where we stopped — crime warnings and admonishment to not explore alone — kept me on the ship. I think there was something about the different feeling between a third-world country and a first-world country that slowed me down, too. Even tours were less appealing, though we’ve done some of them.

Regularly, I was astounded by the warmth and sun in contrast to the weather in Belfast. Before leaving home it seemed the joy of spending time in sun and warmth was appealing. The reality is different. Finding shady spots to hang out in is a challenge I hadn’t anticipated and love. There are some wonderful spots on the pool deck that give the breeze to keep my cool and the filtered sunshine to remind me I’m sailing.

Rock the Boat

Learning how to walk without falling on a ship in rough seas has provided many giggles for me. You’ve possibly heard the phrase “walking like a drunken sailor”? That phrase came to mind frequently as I’d attempt to walk down the stairs, hall, around the promenade deck, and down the hallways. I learned that if I attempt my regular stride I’ll be tossed around in a delightfully, crazy way — like a pinball. If I take a wide stance as I walk, I’m actually almost stable. What a great discovery! I’m still careful to use the handrails as necessary, but I love the challenge of walking as straight as possible and giggling at the results.

And with the rough seas I neither fell out of bed nor got seasick. There were some nights I hugged the center of the bed a bit more than usual, and some nights I thought that maybe I should tuck in the sides of the sheets tightly and crawl in from the top (which I never did). It still all went well. To secure a seasick-free time, I did drink ginger tea regularly. The roughest seas were in the Bay of Biscay on the west side of France and north side of Spain. But really, it’s generally been smooth sailing, which pleases me. I was happy we didn’t have to dance with any hurricanes.

Rough Seas?

While we didn’t particularly suffer from it, as we sailed south of the Panama Canal we heard reports that the ports in Peru would possibly be closed because of high waves. We left Ecuador not knowing when we’d next dock. We pulled into Salaverry, Peru, the port for Trujillo, and learned that the port in Manta, Ecuador, where we’d been a week earlier, was severely damaged.

Our next port was to be Callao, Peru (for Lima), and the report was it would have harsh tides so we might not be able to dock there. Even the container ship we were all waiting for was redirected — back to Manta. The travelers aiming for the Galapagos or Machu Pichu scrambled to make alternate arrangements so they could keep their plans. In the end, we did dock in Callao, and the seas were downright calm.

Callao is another container port. These ports in South America have very high security: we aren’t allowed to walk around the port, specific buses and taxis are the only way in and out, and this one is quite a distance from town, and even further from Lima. I’m not going to struggle with going into town — either of them. I have activities onboard to keep me occupied and engaged.

Activities

Getting involved in ship activities was a surprise. The trivia games and dancing that attract many cruisers don’t do anything for me. The two organizational situations I found myself in were different and fun. First I helped organize an election for a representative to the Board of Directors for the ship. It was a great activity to get to know other residents.

Then I was challenged by the entertainment director to start a speaker’s series — SO many of the residents are experts in a huge variety of fields. I took on the challenge and called it Speakers Corner. The speaker chooses their topic and they get up to 45 minutes to talk, plus up to 15 minutes of Q&A. We have them on average every four days. Presentations run from history of places we’ve visited, the biophysics of thermoregulation for hot and cold climates, medieval marriage, Emergency Medical Services, hearing better, strategies to buy a cabin, an introduction to indie films, living in Namibia, and more.

These evenings are wildly popular with anywhere from a quarter to a half of the residents attending. So far the most popular talks were Randy talking about his time as a medic, with such an unexpected upbeat ending several residents were left in tears (previous post), Andy talking about why he most recently lived in Namibia for several years and what he found special about the country, and Randy’s NASA talk, specifically about the Cassini Mission to Saturn, also coming up later online!

Bottom Line

That’s some of the specifics. The question in your mind might be, what’s it like in general?

Some of the things we looked forward to when we contemplated this lifestyle were:

• Community. In general, the people are awesome. We’ve met many friends. It helped that we had a small cadre in Belfast that we could get to know — a core of people who went through some weird times together. Once we got going, the group has kept expanding, to 3-4 times that crowd, and it’s still growing. We haven’t been able to keep up with learning names. But that’s OK: more friends to meet as we continue!
• Food. The quality, variety, and quantity of the food choices has been well beyond “good.” The struggle is to stop when we’ve had enough! If we go to breakfast (rare), we’ll skip either lunch (usually) or dinner. Theoretically, the kitchen is on a two-week rotating schedule, but there have always been new things we haven’t seen before on offer, and we haven’t groaned, “Not that dish again!” even once.
  • Worst case scenario: if there’s really nothing on the buffet you really want, there are made-to-order omelettes or other egg dishes available (every breakfast time), and several made-to-order items for lunch/dinner: club sandwich, burger/cheeseburger with fries, pasta with meat/sauces, and sometimes grilled salmon. Randy has occasionally ordered up spaghetti with meat sauce, or a nice pesto cream pasta, but usually there are so many delights on the buffet (or the menu in the sit-down restaurant) that he doesn’t feel the need to.
• Itinerary. There have been changes to the itinerary, back to before we even launched. Because of our late start, we (for instance) missed going to Iceland and the Norwegian fjords, but we know those will be added in once we finish our first circumnavigation. Frankly, we’re not at all worried about “missing” something since we’re here for the long haul, but we understand others might be very disappointed at a bucket list location being skipped since they have set aside a certain amount of time to be aboard.
  • “Regular” cruise ships also are forced to change itineraries even when the whole point of a cruise is to see Place X (e.g., Antarctica), and it’s in their contracts that this is a possibility, often without any refunds available. It’s part of the nature of cruising. We have still seen some amazing things and gone places most cruise ships will never get to, and it’s all part of the adventure. And since we plan to “go around” two, three, four, or maybe even more times, with variations part of the plan every time, we’re just not sweating it.
• Expectations. I like to say “expectations kill” — the unexpected is part of the adventure, and demanding that everything goes perfectly is a recipe for destroying your joy. Still, we did have a basic vision of what this lifestyle would be like. Is it as good as we figured it would be? Yes! We have no regrets over selling everything and going on this adventure.

It’s been a good 90 days. I’m looking forward to learning what the next 90 days will provide. It is already a grand adventure.

• About the Author
• Latest Posts

Kit Cassingham

Kit is the co-founder of Residential Cruising, and is best known as a longevity mindset coach at Live in Focused Energy. She and her husband, Randy, live full-time on the Residential Cruising ship Villa Vie Odyssey, where they are “Digital Nomads” — continuing their work while living aboard the ship.

• The First 90 Days
• “Why Are You Here?”
• The Rock