April 20, 2026 - Our One Year "VillaVersary"

It’s been exactly one year since we moved our lives onto the Villa Vie Odyssey. We have been living the dream and loving it. We've met so many new friends and we've visited some of the most beautiful and interesting places on the planet. We so enjoy the life of luxury where all our meals are prepared, our cabin is cleaned, our laundry is done - without us needing to lift a finger - and it's all included in one reasonable monthly fee. We don't have to plan any travels, no airplanes, no hotels, no packing and unpacking. We just wake up in our own beds and look out the window to see where we are today.

Just 2 examples of some of the epic places we've been

But as I’ve learned this year, while the scenery is great, the internal navigation takes practice. There’s no manual for turning a five-star "vacation" ship into a "forever" home. To keep the journey smooth, I’ve had to recalibrate my internal compass.

The FOMO Filter

The majority of the 350 residents on board participate in chat groups set up in WhatsApp. It's a great way for us all to stay connected, but it does get busy. The chats include a constant stream of "Spectacular!" and "Check out this photo!"

• “That hike to the waterfall in Bora Bora was breathtaking.”

• “We just finished a traditional tea ceremony in Kyoto.”

• “Don't miss the Tarsiers at the nature reserve!”

The FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is real. We didn't do the tea ceremony. We didn't see the tiny monkeys. Why? Because I have to sit at my computer. I have a blog to write, the Geeks On Tour website to manage, newsletters to ship, and videos to make. I'm not being forced to do any of that mind you, it's what I love. Geeks on Tour has been our business since 2004 and we still make a little bit of money at it, but we want to do it because it's who we are.

I’ve had to learn a new mental skill: reading those messages and saying, "I love hearing about all that," rather than "I'm missing out on that." I’ve traded the waterfall for the keyboard so that this lifestyle remains sustainable. Their photos are almost as good as being there—right?

The "Non-Stop Rally"

People think "Sea Days" (when we are in transit between ports) are quiet. They aren't! In fact, they are often busier than port days because that’s when the community comes alive. Meetings, classes, rehearsals, and meals! Lots of meals with lots of friends. 

Back when we were full-time RVers, we loved attending RV Rallies—weeks full of seminars, parties, and reunions. But when the rally was over, everyone drove their bedrooms in different directions and went back to "normal" life. Living on the Odyssey is like a non-stop RV rally. Take a look at just one of our recent Sea Days:

• Chris: Line dancing, Women with Wanderlust luncheon, and a Jeopardy skit rehearsal.

• Jim: Skit rehearsals a poetry reading recording, and tech management (visuals/light/sound) for a full length play.

• Both: Ship safety drills, presentation by the Chief Engineer about the ship, and dinner with friends.

Where is the time to pay bills or answer emails? The challenge is adjusting our mindset to realize that just because there is a party, doesn't mean we have to be at it.

The Buffet and the Bathrobe

The physical adjustments are the funniest. Having every meal prepared is easy to get used to; learning not to eat like it’s a holiday every day is the hard part!

Then there’s the "Public Life" shift. In a house or an RV, you can spend all day in a ratty t-shirt with messy hair. On the ship, the moment you leave your cabin, you are in public. I never thought I’d see the day where I’d put on earrings just to go get breakfast—yet, here we are!

The Art of Doing Nothing

One year in, I’ve realized that the most important thing I need to do is... nothing. In a lifestyle that offers 24/7 stimulation and global exploration, choosing to sit still is the most difficult mental adjustment of all.

We aren't on a year-long vacation; we are living our lives at sea. And sometimes, the best way to navigate that life is to go to your room and shut the door. I really like our cabin. As much as I love the real world, I also love my online world. Sitting at my computer, joining Zoom calls, writing, watching others' videos. That's as nourishing to me as hiking to a waterfall. I need both. We've set up our room to be very comfortable for one or both of us to be there. We can both be at our computers, or we can take a nap, or we can just stare out the window and watch the waves go by.

The New Equation: Play/Life Balance

We’ve all heard of Work/Life balance, but on the Odyssey, I’ve had to invent a new metric: Play/Life balance. When your backyard is a rotating gallery of the world’s wonders and your "living room" is a hub of constant social activity, "Play" becomes the default setting. It’s a wonderful "problem" to have, but it’s still a challenge. If I spent every day playing, the Geeks on Tour website would gather digital dust, the bills wouldn't get paid, and I’d eventually burn out from too much of a good thing.

Recalibrating for the long haul means realizing that:

• "Life" is the quiet morning coffee, the focused work hours, and the zoom calls with stateside friends and colleagues.

• "Play" is the Bali tubing, the line dancing, and the late-night dinners with friends.

Finding that balance is how we ensure this isn't just a one-year experiment, but a sustainable way to live for many years to come. I’m learning that it’s okay to say "no" to the play so that I can say "yes" to the life.

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New Zealand, abbreviated

We were supposed to have 6 Ports in new Zealand, plus cruising the fjords in the South but as it turned out we only made it to 4 ports and skipped the fjords.

At least, we had a couple of memorable excursions. In our first stop of Tauranga, we did the railcarts. 

Golf carts adapted to run on an abandoned railroad make for a fun excursion. Here, we stop to feed the ducks and geese.

Never seen geese like this! They have curly feathers and can't fly - Sebastopol geese.

Then we got the news about the ships bottom needing extra cleaning before we would be allowed in any more ports. Even after 3 days of divers scraping our hull, it still wasn't good enough. Although we were allowed in ports, we could only stay for 24 hours and we weren't allowed in the fjords at all. 

Friends and Family

Villa Vie has a great program for those of us who own our cabins on board. It's called 'friends and family' where we can invite someone to join us for up to 2 weeks in board at very little cost. We were scheduled to pick up our first visitor in Wellington. Luckily we were able to collect her even with our port troubles and her missed flights. And we even had a few hours to spare where we got to see a little of the renowned museum Te Papa.

 

An impressive exhibit about the battle at Gallipoli during WW1

We did get Jo on board, but her luggage didn't make it. Somehow it ended up in Christchurch. That was the ships next stop, so Jim and Jo took a bus from the port to the airport to get it and that pretty much consumed that port since we only had 24 hours. 

During the sea days, we had a wedding on board - the second one since we've been on the ship. This time it was Ric and Ellie who - just like the first wedding - met each other on board. So sweet!

Dunedin Train Ride

Next stop, Dunedin where we had previously booked a train ride. A lot of people had booked this same trying ride, so the ship kicked a few things to make sure that our 24 hours accommodate us. It was a great ride. 

The Dunedin Train Station is one of the most photographed buildings in the Southern Hemisphere, so we had to do our part to keep that up!

A really cool part is that they had us get off the train and walk across a bridge. Then we could look back and photograph the train coming across the same bridge.

After Dunedin, we were off for 5 sea days back to Australia. People who really wanted to see new Zealand got off the ship and rented cars, then flew to Melbourne to meet back up with us.

Hang on, rough seas

Wow. This is an experience. Not necessarily a good one😜. We just spent an extra 3 days at sea off the coast of Tauranga in order to get our hull scraped. New Zealand has very strict biosecurity laws. Even though the odyssey had its hull cleaned in the Philippines, that wasn't good enough for them. I get it. As an island where any infestation could be catastrophic, they need to be extremely careful. 

What a process. The ship has to go out beyond the 12 mile limit and a boat with divers followed us. They worked all the first day, then got delayed on the second day due to bumpy seas. They were able to work a third day and get it done. The ship then went back to dock around midnight where there were residents waiting to be picked up. Then we got underway to Wellington, skipping the Napier stop. We were supposed to be in Wellington Mar 2,3,4. Now we're scheduled to get there on the 4th. 

The problem now is really rough seas. To give you an idea of the intensity, the local ferries between the North and South Islands have been canceled for several days. The roughest seas before this were when we came in to San Francisco. This is rougher. And longer. In San Francisco rough waters were over as soon as we turned in to the bay, just a few hours of a bumpy ride. Here it started yesterday afternoon, went all night and is only worse now. Forecasts don't have it lightening up until we reach Wellington tomorrow.  

The boats stabilizers do a good job of keeping it level side to side but we are sure going up and down front to back and the boom when the ship crashes into the sea is deafening. We're sure getting bounced around. I joked to Jim that it's a good thing we just got a mattress topper or we may have gotten bruised during the night. 

Our TV turned to the Bridge Camera channel

I asked Gemini if this happens often and it said the Cook Straits is known worldwide as a very treacherous waterway. 

I might need a sleeping pill by tonight. 

Samoa and Geeks on Tour

 We were docked in Apia, Samoa for 3 days but we didn't even get off the ship 😜 Port days where we have no tourist stuff planned are the only time we get to catch up on our work! Sea days have so many shipboard activities planned that it's hard to get anything else done. This is our life, and we are learning to adjust to the fact that we won't see everything, we have other stuff we want to do besides being tourists. We call it 'work' but we actually enjoy doing our Geeks on Tour stuff, so we make time for it.

To create a YouTube 'Studio" Jim uses magnets to hang a green screen from the ceiling. Then he sets up an extension to his desk so I can sit beside him and do my part. Other than the work to set it up and tear it down, this works great. 

 While we were in Apia, we did our Geeks on Tour YouTube show, Episode 313 of What Does this Button Do? Our topic was Google Photos 2025 Updates. We even did it live! As we've been sailing east, our time zone is not that much different from the US. I really like doing our show at 2pm - I've gotten hardwired to be ready at that hour - but if I upped it just a few hours to 11am, that made it 5pm on the east coast. Very doable. It was a great show, if I do say so myself. Not even one hiccup with our Internet connections. There are some jaw-dropping new features in Google Photos - my favorite is "Help me Edit" and I came up with some practical examples that do a great job of showing off the feature. If you don't want to watch the whole show, just click this link to take you straight to what I think is the very best part.

Clicking 'Play" on this video will take you straight to my favorite part. You can always scroll back to the beginning and watch the whole thing.

Diving in Fiji

  We're in the south Pacific. Some of the best diving in the world. We've done a lot of diving around the world and when people ask me "Where was your favorite?" I respond - Fiji. We were there in 2006. Me, Jim and Mom spent 10 days there on the Nai'a liveaboard dive boat and it was spectacular and fun! 

See our blog posts from 2006. I saved them in .pdf format to preserve the photos.
(Here are the original blog posts: We have to go back to Fiji and Part 1-Diving in Fiji and Part 2 - Diving in Fiji)

This time we joined a group for diving in the Namena Marine Reserve while the ship was anchored in Savusavu. It was a long boat ride to 2 very nice dives. One was called 'chimneys' because of the unusual formation of 2 coral heads sticking straight up and the other was Grand Central Station. I'll remember it more clearly as Grand Canyon for the dramatic walls. It was great, but it didn't live up to my memory. The comparison really isn't fair since, in 2006 we were on a liveaboard for 10 days, making at least 30 dives all over the Fiji area. Still, I figure I'm sure a spoiled diver when I go to a protected dive site in Fiji and come up saying ... "That was nice." 😜

Here's Jim's video:

Fiji Fun

 

We've been in Fiji once before - 2006 on a liveaboard dive boat. More on diving later. This time we're here on the Villa Vie Odyssey, our floating home, and we bounced around the islands for 2 weeks, making 6 stops. 

 

Suva

In Suva, we joined some Odyssean friends, Eve, Carolyn and Andrew, for happy hour at the Grand Pacific Hotel. It was a short taxi ride away from the ship. It was a beautiful evening.

We also visited the American Embassy to get a document notarized and found a lot of our fellow Odysseans already there trying to get new passports with more Visa pages. Yes, it's a thing! In this lifestyle we visit so many countries - 20 so far this year - that the pages in your passport get filled up! If you have no blank pages, your Passport is no good. Our passports were only a year old, but it could get full before another year passes, so we need to pay attention. The big problem is, in order to get a new passport you normally have to surrender your current one. We can't do that. So we are blazing new trails with the procedures of our Dept. of State. Based on what these trailblazers are learning, we will attempt to get new passports when we are in Sydney next February, and we will get the new 52 page booklets rather than our current 25 or so.

A Tropical Embassy!

Lautoka

We didn't make any particular plans in Lautoka. We stayed on the ship and did computer work. But we did take a walk from the ship along the waterfront and found a delightful hotel bar for a drink under the palm trees. 

It's always such a delight to come back home.

Meanwhile, back at the ship, we had a "Speaker's Corner" about staying safe. Some information was about keeping your phone safe and who to contact if you get in trouble. Other information was about self-defense. Our friend, Donna, is trained in the street fighting martial art called Krav Maga, and Silja is a black-belt in Karate. You can see the video recording here: Speakers Corner: Self Awareness - a panel discussion. Regardless of the topic, you can always count on Donna's husband, Wayne, to inject some humor 🤣

Wayne is ready for his wife, Donna, to demonstrate self-defense techniques!

We also had dinner with new friends, Elma and Robert. When we learned that they lived in an RV for 14 years ... in Europe! ... We just had to talk more. So we planned to have dinner in the "Thistle" which is the sit down restaurant on board. We learned that those years were spent working, going from hospital to hospital teaching staff how to operate new radiology equipment. Robert is a radiology imaging specialist and Elma was certified in NeoNatal Intensive care. 14 years! Living in hospital parking lots. But that's not all. They are both of Dutch heritage, but lived in Venezuela, South Africa, and call Paris 'home.' I lost count of the number of languages they speak.

Oh! The People we Meet!

Diving World War II Wrecks

There was a lot of activity in these here parts during WWII. We dove some wrecks near Honiara in the Solomon Islands (Guadalcanal) and in Vanuatu - the largest US base outside of Pearl Harbor. I asked Gemini to tell me all about the major battles of the war and the significance of the particular dive sites we saw. Here's the results - it's well worth the read: Diving into History

Here's a map of where we dove:

Solomon Islands

Guadalcanal is the name of the island that saw heavy fighting during WWII. Our ship docked in Honiara, the capital city of the Solomon islands and we booked 1 day of diving, 2 dives, with Emperor Divers. It was a long, bumpy drive to the first dive, then even more to the second. We generally prefer reefs to wrecks, but with so much history here, it's cool to dive the wrecks. 

The town of Honiara had lots of markets

Roadside stands further out in the country

the final stretch of the drive to the beach where we dove the Hirokawa Maru wreck.

Vanuatu

Vanuatu was not directly involved in any battles but it supplied much of the personnel and equipment to the rest of the South Pacific. The US military base in Vanuatu was second only to Pearl Harbor in size! The wreck we dove, the SS Coolidge, was an American ship with a very sad story. The sinking of the SS President Coolidge is one of the most dramatic "friendly fire" incidents of the war.
The captain had been told to wait outside the harbor for an escort but, due to security, he could not be told why - the the US Navy had heavily mined the channel to stop Japanese submarines from entering. The captain waited a while, but Fear of attack by the Japanese made him press forward before the escort arrived. The ship was blown up by 2 of the mines, but the captain boldly sailed the ship closer to shore and all the soldier/passengers and all the crew were able to reach safety on shore. There were just 2 deaths amongst the over 5,000 souls on board - the man in the engine room who took a direct hit and one soldier who went back to rescue others, then was caught himself. 

It's an impressive dive because it is such a large ship.

Diving the SS Coolidge with Allan Power Dive Tours. They own this property right at the beach dive for the wreck. Nice operation.

If you think the Coolidge story is interesting, wait till you hear about our second dive on Vanuatu! It's called Million Dollar Point. At the end of WWII, the US Military had accumulated tons of of surplus equipment : jeeps, trucks, bulldozers, cranes, and supplies. They offered to sell it all to the French and British colonial authorities for pennies on the dollar.

The local powers, however, were stubborn. They figured they could wait for the Americans to leave and take everything for free. The US military—rather than leave the equipment behind or deal with the logistical nightmare of shipping it back—decided to simply dump it all into the sea over several days in 1945. They used bulldozers to shove it all down a pier and into the ocean, they drove the bulldozers off the pier by putting a brick on the gas pedal, then they blew up the pier! 80 years lalter, it makes for a fascinating dive site.

 

Australia Dancing and Diving

 One day that we were in Cairns, Australia happened to be my birthday. What a treat! 

Cruise Port at Cairns, Australia

On board the ship we have a line-dancing group. They meet and dance every day when we are at sea. They learn new dances, and practice old ones. The teacher is Kathie and she contacted a line-dancing group in Cairns to see if we could have a joint session. 

Here's what happened

Kathie learned when the Cairns line-dancing group meets and where - turns out they dance at Hemmingway's Brewery which just so happens to be right at the cruise ship port! 

Kathie and the Australian dance group leader scheduled that location for a day that the Odyssey would be in port. For more than 2 hours, both Kathie and the Cairns group leader had us all doing line-dances to all sorts of songs. One of them is "Nutbush City Limits" by Tina Turner. I don't quite understand how, but that song is the backdrop for a simple exercise/dance that most everyone in Australia knows how to do. They learn it in grade school - The Nutbush!

The line-dancing group on the Odyssey learned the Nutbush and was prepared to dance it with the Australian dancers while in Cairns. It was GREAT! Then we also learned a couple new (to us) dances and performed them all together. What Fun! I just can't imagine a better way to celebrate my birthday than dancing ... in Australia ... doing an Australian dance ... with a group of Australians. I'm on the other side of the planet from my normal home and I'm having a fantastic time!

Scuba Diving on the Great Barrier Reef

The next day we had booked a full day of diving on the Great Barrier Reef. We dove on the GBR once before in 2019 and, due to bad weather, it wasn't great. We had low expectations therefore and they were definitely exceeded. Our dive buddy friends from the ship, Wayne and Donna,  were also on board for the day and we had a great time. 

Wayne and Donna leading the way with their creative way of transporting their dive gear. 

Lots of life this time

Happy Divers

Going home after a great day of diving!