Technical difficulties. Paperwork. Delays. Promises made and broken. It had been four months of waiting and starting and stopping. Four months of being told that it would just be another few days and we would be off on our three-and-a-half-year journey to end all journeys. We had flown from Florida to Belfast to Tenerife to Dublin to Minneapolis to Florida and back to Belfast. We had been told to book another two nights, three nights, a week at a hotel or apartment for the last time and finally had boarded our ship, Villa Vie Odyssey. We sat at anchor in the Irish Sea still in sight of Belfast for two nights waiting for another official to stamp some piece of paper saying that we could finally be set free.
The destination given to the officials was, I think, Huntly, Scotland. It doesn't really matter because as soon as we started moving, we were going south instead of north. We were heading towards Brest, France.
As we pulled up the anchor and set sail, the residents were asked to gather in the Observation Lounge to celebrate. When we got there, we looked down on the front deck to see Kathy and Mike (the CEO and COO of Villa Vie) christening the newly named Odyssey (formerly Braemar). Mike took a bottle of champagne and threw it against the steel ribs at the front of the ship. The bottle bounced back. Kathy tried again with the same results. She returned the bottle to Mike, who took his responsibilities a bit more seriously, and the bubbly was finally set free, as were we. It seems that nothing was going to go right on the first try for this ship, but eventually, it would get done.
Mike and Kathy came up to the Observatory Lounge to join us all in champagne and celebration. A fellow resident asked Mike if he had something to say. Mike hesitated and didn't seem to have expected this request. That was when I asked if we shouldn't make a toast. There was a bit of looking around and I offered one myself: "The safest place for a ship is in the harbor. But that is not what ships were built for, and neither were we. Here is the launching of our odyssey and our Odyssey." And with that, we were finally in motion. And tomorrow would be spent at sea on my birthday. Not a bad gift to me. With a beautiful sunset to boot.
With a few days' worth of wastewater from a celebratory group of Belfast refugees, the bowels of the ship were pretty full of it, and we weren't yet prepared to discharge any liquids while at sea. This meant The Odyssey had to hold it until we got to our next port. With this in mind, the water to the cabins was shut off around three o'clock the next morning without notice. I had just finished my monthly Zoom call with my brothers at 2:00 AM and chose not to share the damning news with Dusty when I returned to our cabin. We would arrive by 8:00 AM, and things would surely be worked out then.
I went out on deck to watch the tugboat work us up to the dock as the sun was rising. There was a little sailboat gliding across the water. I was so ready to get started. A crew member got out the French flag and ran it up as we officially arrived at our first port! I thought.
Shortly after we docked, Kathy, Mike, and two of the senior staff disembarked the ship for good. Shortly after that, we were told that no one else would be allowed to leave the ship because we were here only for a technical stop and none of the requirements for shore visits had been completed.
With no water and no ability to go ashore, Dusty was being pushed to her limits once again, as was I. I agreed that if we were not able to disembark at the next port, Bilbao, Spain, I would make arrangements to leave the ship once we reached Lisbon and leave for good. This was becoming a nightmare. So much sacrifice in time, money, and hope to be stuck in a third-world situation without water or flushing toilets.