I sold my house to live on a cruise ship and I’m mostly not insane
The first thing you notice isn’t the ocean. It’s the vibration. It’s this constant, low-frequency hum that lives in your teeth and eventually becomes the only way you can fall asleep. If the engines ever truly stopped, I think half the residents on this ship would wake up screaming from the silence.
I’ve been living on a ship for 412 days now. I’m not a billionaire, I’m not a retiree with a golden parachute, and I’m definitely not a ‘content creator’ trying to sell you a lifestyle course. I’m just a guy who worked in logistics for fifteen years, looked at the housing market in Denver, and decided that a 140-square-foot cabin with a view of the Mediterranean was a better deal than a mortgage for a basement in a suburb that smells like fertilizer.
The laundry room is where souls go to die
People think living on a ship is all umbrella drinks and towel animals. It isn’t. You still have to do your own socks. On my ship—I’m currently on a long-term stint with a major line that rhymes with ‘Holland’—there are exactly four washing machines for my entire deck. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently: the laundry room is a war zone. I have seen a 70-year-old woman throw a bag of Tide pods at a man because he moved her damp sweaters to the folding table three minutes after the cycle ended. It was brutal. I just stood there clutching my mesh bag of underwear, terrified.
I once had a complete meltdown in that laundry room. It was Tuesday, 11:45 PM. I’d had a rough day of remote work—the Starlink was acting up and my boss was annoyed about a spreadsheet—and I just wanted clean jeans. I found someone had left their clothes in the only working dryer for two hours. I didn’t move them. I just sat on the floor and cried for ten minutes. A crew member found me and asked if I was seasick. I wasn’t seasick. I was just tired of sharing my life with 2,000 strangers. Living here is like being a character in a Sims game where the player forgot to build a backyard.
The lack of private space will eventually break you if you aren’t careful.
The math actually works (sort of)
I tracked every cent for the first six months. My daily burn rate is $164.20. That includes the cabin, the food, the ‘basic’ Wi-Fi that barely loads a YouTube video, and the port fees. In Denver, between the mortgage, the HOA fees that went up 15% last year, car insurance, and the $14 salads, I was hitting $210 a day just to exist. I’m saving money by living in a floating metal box. It’s absurd. I know people will disagree and say I’m losing out on home equity, but equity doesn’t feed you unlimited prime rib on Thursday nights. I used to think owning a house was the only way to be an adult. I was completely wrong. It was just a heavy anchor I didn’t need.
Living on a ship is the ultimate hack for people who are bad at grocery shopping but good at living in small spaces.
I might be wrong about this, but I’m convinced the ship’s decaf coffee is actually just watered-down regular. I’ve been drinking it for a year and I still have heart palpitations at 2 AM. Or maybe that’s just the existential dread of knowing I don’t have a permanent mailing address anymore. Anyway, back to the point.
I have some very unfair opinions about my neighbors
You meet everyone. And when you live here, you start to develop these irrational, petty hatreds. For example, I refuse to talk to anyone who wears those ‘Captain’ hats they buy in the gift shop. If you didn’t earn the stripes, don’t wear the hat. It’s pathetic. I also think families with kids under 12 should be restricted to a specific ‘noise zone’ near the engine room from 4 PM to 8 PM. I know, I’m a monster. But when you’re trying to read a book in the Crow’s Nest and a toddler is screaming because they ran out of chicken nuggets, your empathy levels drop to zero.
The ‘World Cruisers’ are the worst, though. They’ve been on the ship for three months and they think they own the buffet. I saw a guy named Gerald—who I happen to know is from Ohio—try to pull rank on a new waiter because his omelet was ‘insufficiently fluffy.’ Gerald, we are in the middle of the Atlantic. Eat your eggs and shut up.
It’s a cult. A very weird, very polite cult.
The part nobody tells you about the horizon
There is a specific kind of loneliness that happens when you’re in the middle of a crossing. You look out the balcony and there is nothing. No birds, no ships, just blue turning into black. It’s beautiful for about three days. By day five, you start talking to the mini-fridge. I’ve started naming the waves. There’s ‘Big Greg’—he’s a 15-footer that usually shows up around the Bay of Biscay.
I remember this one night near the Azores. I was standing on Deck 10, completely alone. The stars were so bright they looked fake, like someone had poked holes in a black velvet curtain. I felt incredibly small. Not the ‘cool, philosophical’ kind of small, but the ‘if I fell over this railing, the ship wouldn’t even tilt’ kind of small. It was terrifying. I went back to my cabin and watched a downloaded episode of *The Office* just to feel like a person again.
The ocean doesn’t care about your lifestyle choices.
I’m not sure how much longer I’ll do this. Maybe another year. Maybe until the engines finally give out. I miss the smell of rain hitting hot asphalt. I miss having a kitchen where I can make a mess and not have a cabin steward clean it up thirty minutes later (which is lovely but also makes me feel like a helpless child). But then I look at my bank account and then I look at the sunrise over the Amalfi Coast, and I realize I’m not ready to go back to a cul-de-sac yet.
Do I recommend it? Only if you really, truly like yourself. Because on a ship, there’s nowhere to hide from your own head.
Is it worth the $164 a day? Every single penny.
The first thing you notice isn’t the ocean. It’s the vibration. It’s this constant, low-frequency hum that lives in your teeth and eventually becomes the only way you can fall asleep. If the engines ever truly stopped, I think half the residents on this ship would wake up screaming from the silence. I’ve been living…
