Auckland Park resident Jim and Chris Gardo are selling their homes and traveling around the world, living full-time on a cruise ship called the Villa Be Odyssey.
Is that exciting? yes. expensive? of seeds. tight?
Well, Gulds says he’s not worried about feeling cramps inside his 140-square-foot stateroom due to the 15-year option he just bought. They recently spent 14 years together in recreational vehicles, each bumping into each of the 48 states.
“We don’t have many in the room,” says Chris. “Every morning we’ll be walking three decks to the gym where we have exercise classes, and there’s a buffet where we eat and entertainment in the afternoon.”
Without a port call, it might get boring after a while. The ship’s itinerary includes stops at 425 ports in over 140 countries over a three-and-a-half year “continuous world cruise.” Gulds is scheduled to board the boat at a stop at Colombia’s Cartagena Port on April 20th, and will stay for at least seven years if you love it.
The ship is now known as Gilla Vie Residences, the flagship of the Pembroke Pines-based company, which is currently sailing in the seventh month. The company caters to those who really want to get away from everything, while still remaining connected through StarLink Internet Services.
The company’s chairman Michael Petterson told South Florida Sun Sentinel on Friday that 354 of 480 cabins have been sold to long-term residents since purchasing the 1993 Villa Vi Odyssey built in 1993 from the Fred Olsen Cruise Line in 2023.
“We look forward to Jim and Chris being on board,” Petterson said. “We’re sure they’ll love it.”
Technology and travel life
Gardo appears to be very suitable for permanent life on a cruise ship.
They met while Chris, now 72, ran a computer-savvy computer training center on Oakland Park Boulevard with his mother in the 1980s and 90s. Local businesses dispatch employees to train programs such as WordPerfect, Novell Netware, Microsoft’s Excel and Access.
Jim, now 71, works for a company in Deerfield Beach, building, installing and networking personal computers. Chris bought a computer from the company for her training center and Jim showed up to serve them.
“So he had to come back,” Chris said. Eventually, Chris hired Jim from the company and focused full-time on her business.
They bonded with mutual love for scuba diving, computers and travel. A few years after Chris sold the center and “retired” in the late 1990s, they sold their first Auckland Park House and bought an RV. They traveled the country for 14 years from 2003 to 2017, holding seminars to teach RV enthusiasts how to join the internet, and produced computer training videos for a company called Geeks on tour.
Geek subscribers can access a long list of class presentations, study guides and tips on the tour website. But everyone can click on over 900 videos the couple has posted over the years, but mostly wears their trademark propeller beanies.
Their earliest videos combine travel and tutorials with the type of software used by travelers to take, upload and geotaggle travel photos, set up travel blogs, assign drive letters to external USB drives, and navigate the highways.
These days, their videos focus on smartphone apps, including how to shoot time-lapse videos, how to use Google’s photo app, how to communicate via Zoom and use WiFi calls when mobile phone services go down.
Video blogger Amoku
Seven years later at another Oakland Park home, the couple is about to travel again, but no traffic and shopping headaches.
Gulds will continue to post training videos from the ship showing how they will deal with the challenges that arise when visiting different ports on the ship’s itinerary. They have already begun sharing plans with 16,700 YouTube subscribers and just under 1,000 paid nerds on tour members.
They don’t just use the internet to work on the boat, Jim says. The cabins of many ships are occupied by solo travelers who operate the living room remotely.
Like Gulds, many filming and posting videos. Searching for ships on YouTube will show you several accounts of Cruise, Midlife Cruising, and Living Life in DC Hidden Jewels by residents who are on board the ship and documenting their lives.
The Cruise Line offers a variety of pricing options depending on the selected size of your residential area and the length of your tour.
Residents can purchase for up to 15 years or rent a cabin for a short period of time. According to the company’s website, buyers can choose to sell unused portions of their residency terms and trade with more expensive cabins or lease or sell spaces that “may receive net profits from the investment.”
Gulds follows one of Randy Cassingham, the longtime author of the online entertainment newsletter, to learn about the ship. Cassingham started a blog called Residential Cruising after riding a Villa Vie Odyssey last year.
“Jim said, ‘Look at this website about living on a cruise ship,” Chris said. “And then I looked at it and said, ‘OK!” ”
Find the right price
The couple said they were interested in buying a cabin with a balcony at first. However, the company wanted $340,000 for its balcony cabin as well as $8,000 a month for amenities such as food, entertainment, health club use and laundry services.
During a week of “try it out” sailing, Gulds tried out a 140-square-foot cabin with no windows and balconies.
“Thankfully, I decided I liked it because it was just $170,000 in advance and $5,000 a month,” Chris said. “That rate might actually save you money compared to everything you spent on your trip last year.”
During the “Try It” trip, the couple says they met and are impressed by many residents who are experts in the field they chose. They continue to entertain each other.
“One man was an emergency medical technician, so he talked about what it was like,” Chris said. “One was a marine biologist who spoke about whales.”
One amenity not available: casino. “They actually did poll,” Jim said. “Then they asked residents if they would consider having a casino.
“They said, ‘Hell, no,'” Chris added.
Not everyone is happy with Gulds’ life-changing decisions. Although Chris has no children, the gym has a son from a previous marriage who lives near the couple.
“When he first heard about it, he wasn’t for that at all,” Jim said. “He thought it would be a scary thing for us to leave him.”
“But he’s 44, right?” Chris said.
She added: “We’re still pretty young, and we’re healthy, but we’re definitely older, so if you want to have another chapter in your adventure, this is the time to do it. This is the next chapter.”
Ron Burtibise covers South Florida Sun Sentinel’s business and consumer issues. He can be contacted by telephone at 954-356-4071 or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.
Original issue: March 29, 2025 7am EDT
