Passengers looking to embark on a 3 ½ year-round-the-world voyage on Villa Vie Residences’ Odyssey cruise ship have been left hanging for the past three months.
In December, the company announced that it had bought Fred Olsen Cruise Lines’ Braemar vessel, which they later named Odyssey.
The ship, which is over 30 years old, was meant to set sail in May.
The planned 1301-day journey will see the cruise liner visit 147 countries across seven continents, including destinations like France, Mexico, and Japan, per Villa Vie Residences’ itinerary.
But mechanical problems have left the Odyssey stuck in Belfast instead, the Associated Press reported on Sunday.
Sebastian Stokkendal, a marketing manager for Villa Vie Residences told the outlet that the company was “humbled by the scale of what it takes to reactivate a 30-year-old vessel from a four-year layup.”
According to a Villa Vie Residences’ webpage on the Odyssey, the cruise ship was lengthened in 2009 and refurbished in 2019.
The vessel is now docked at Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard, which is best known for being where the ill-fated Titanic ocean liner, was built.
The need for repairs means that the Odyssey’s passengers have also been stuck in Belfast.
Roughly 200 passengers have been residing in the city, with Villa Vie Residences paying for their living expenses, according to the AP.
Notably, the passengers are allowed to stay on the ship during the day but have to disembark every evening, where they can spend the night at hotels in Belfast or other European cities, the AP reported.
“We can spend all day aboard the ship, and they provide shuttle buses to get on and off,” passenger Holly Hennessey told the BBC in a report published Wednesday.
“We can have all of our meals and they even have movies and trivia entertainment, almost like cruising except we’re at the dock,” she added.
The Odyssey, Stokkendal told the AP, could set sail soon once the repair work on its rudder shafts, steel work, and engine overhauls is completed.
“We expect a very anticipated successful launch next week where we will head to Bremerhaven, Amsterdam, Lisbon, then across the Atlantic for our Caribbean segment,” Stokkendal wrote in an email to the outlet.
