Seven Hours to Leave Home

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2026

SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia — The message arrived early Tuesday morning. Residents of the Villa Vie Odyssey say the chief executive informed them at 6 a.m. that the ship could not secure the fuel to keep sailing — and that every resident had to be off it by 2 p.m. that same day.

These were not passengers at the end of a holiday. They were homeowners. The Odyssey is a residential cruise ship: people bought cabins as permanent homes, or took five-year residencies, on a voyage designed to circle the globe continuously for three and a half years at a time. Permanent cabins started at $119,999 and ran to $440,000 for the largest suites, on top of monthly fees between $3,299 and $9,500 that covered food, drinks, Wi-Fi, medical visits and housekeeping. Many residents sold their houses on land to be there.

By Tuesday afternoon, 203 residents and 156 crew had come down the gangway at Sihanoukville, the port where the ship had docked five days earlier on what was supposed to be a routine stop on the way to Vietnam. Residents took their pets and what belongings they could carry. Some have already flown out of Cambodia; others are still in the port city, working out what happens next. The deputy governor of Preah Sihanouk province, Long Dimanche, said the sudden order “has left many retirees and remote workers homeless thousands of miles from their home countries.” The residents came from 15 nationalities; most were Americans.

The couple from Wyoming

Lynn and Paul Montoya sold their house and their cars in Wyoming to afford their cabin: $179,000 to buy in, plus roughly $6,000 a month in fees, to spend their retirement seeing the world. They had lived aboard for 17 months.

“We really hadn’t travelled that much out of the United States until probably a few months before we boarded the ship,” Paul Montoya told Reuters, “and we just saw it as a great opportunity to be able to see the world.”

His assessment of why the ship stopped was blunt. “They’ve run out of money,” he said. “That’s why they couldn’t buy fuel. They’ve even had difficulties paying the crew on the ship, which even makes it more difficult. So we’re really not expecting any money back.”

The Montoyas plan to live for now on the money they had budgeted for the monthly fees, and to spend some time in Malaysia. Lynn Montoya said they would miss the community aboard more than the money. “It’s hard to lose that money,” she said, “but I also look at it as, we’ve had 17 months of going to the most amazing places and meeting the most amazing people.”

The company’s account

Villa Vie Residences, the Florida-based operator, blames fuel. In its statement, the company said monthly fuel costs that historically averaged about $1,800 per cabin had recently reached an estimated $6,000 to $8,000 in parts of Asia, driven by the war with Iran, which began in late February. “The company cannot simply pass increases of that scale on to residents,” it said, adding that it had been “unable to continue carrying the resulting operating losses.”

The company said it had already tried slowing the ship down and spending longer in port to burn less fuel, and that it was not enough. It will spend the next 60 days attempting to restructure and recapitalize — with a warning attached: that work “is ongoing, and no outcome is assured.” No financing has been finalized. Villa Vie did not respond to Reuters’ questions about what happens to residents’ money, and it has not said whether refunds or compensation will follow.

What help residents are getting on the ground is disputed. The company says it is working to coordinate disembarkation and temporary living arrangements, and founder Mikael Petterson has said Villa Vie is covering lodging and local transportation — though not the cost of flying out of Cambodia. Resident Randy Cassingham, who sold his Colorado mountain home to live aboard and writes about the voyage, disputes the lodging claim outright: “They have absolutely not offered to pay for that lodging, full stop.” He said residents were given shuttle buses into town, but not even a list of hotels.

The signs were there

Residents say the money trouble had been visible for months. Paul Montoya told Reuters that as fuel prices climbed, the company asked passengers to contribute more — and asked residents to provide a loan for fuel. In April, according to The Times, the company tried to impose a fuel surcharge that appeared nowhere in residents’ contracts; about two-thirds of them refused to pay it. The food, Montoya said, began to deteriorate about three months ago, and when the ship reached Cambodia there was no internet at all.

The Times also reported that earlier this year the ship had been forced to leave Australia ahead of schedule and reshape part of its Asia itinerary over access to fuel, and that residents had to pay extra to leave Singapore. In August, the ship’s captain acknowledged in a German documentary that the vessel was struggling to pay for — and at times even to secure — sufficient fuel. Cassingham, who had watched it build, called the end “a cascade of problems piling up on one another, from the business model to mistakes by management to the mentioned crisis in fuel cost and availability.”

The cruise that couldn’t start

The Odyssey’s whole life has run like this. Before she was a floating neighborhood, the 1993-built ship — formerly Fred Olsen’s Braemar — spent the summer of 2024 stuck in Belfast, where rudder and gearbox failures and a long certification fight kept her in the repair yard for four months past her planned May departure, while the people who had bought her cabins waited in hotels. She finally left Belfast at the end of September 2024, turned back once for paperwork, and sailed for good on October 3.

From there, by every account, she delivered: 755 days of continuous sailing, more than 60 countries, a community of retirees and remote workers who ate together, celebrated together and buried their land lives behind them. In July, Villa Vie announced a second residential ship, Legacy, due in 2029, and said more than 85% of the Odyssey’s residences had been sold. One week ago, the company updated the ship’s itinerary with ports scheduled through August 2030.

Some residents are holding onto that version of the story. Holly Hennessy, who has lived aboard since the Belfast departure, is staying in Cambodia in the hope the ship sails again: “Until they say we are done — done done — I am not giving up. I could never duplicate this lifestyle.” Lanette Canen and Johan Bodin, who were among those told at 6 a.m. to be off by two, said the two years were worth it, and that many residents plan to settle together on land so the community survives the ship.

What happens next

The deputy governor says the Odyssey is scheduled to refuel and leave Cambodia on Saturday, its crew still aboard to maintain it; the company has not confirmed that. Behind it sits the 60-day clock: find new money, or the temporary layup becomes the end of the voyage — and hundreds of people who paid for a home at sea learn what, if anything, it is still worth.

For now, the residents of a ship that was never supposed to stop are scattered across a port city in Cambodia, doing the math on a retirement that was supposed to take care of itself. Lynn Montoya has already done hers. Seventeen months, the most amazing places, the most amazing people. “It’s hard to lose that money,” she said. She is choosing to count the rest.