About Pat
“Some may call my quest for the Ultimate Travel Retirement Plan a tad crazy. If worldwide news bleeps and a segment on SNL are the measure, I have to agree.”
Patricia (Pat) Patrick is a semi-retiree, solo traveler, consultant, and proud Philadelphian. As the oldest sibling in a large and loving family, she grew up with travel already stitched into the fabric of life.
Those early family camping trips covered 46 U.S. states. Since then she has added three more, with Alaska still marked for completion, and built out a passport full of Europe, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Caribbean, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Australia, and New Zealand.
In May 2022, a neighbor mentioned an article about a widow living on a cruise ship instead of moving to a retirement community. That one story unlocked an entirely different vision of what retirement could be.
While researching, Pat discovered Storylines and was captivated by the idea: a three-year world cruise following the sun, visiting all seven continents, more than 150 ports, and more than 110 countries, with enough time in port to explore at a slower, deeper pace.
Pat committed to a 12-year deal in May 2022, expecting to be sailing by 2025. But by July 2023, after flying to Newport Beach to meet fellow residents and management, the timeline had slipped dramatically, with late 2027 sounding like the earliest realistic target.
When the shipbuilder went bankrupt, the odds of Storylines becoming real looked increasingly remote. Pat asked for and received a full refund, but the dream itself did not go away.
In October 2023, the search turned up Villa Vie Residences. The company had purchased a ship, was preparing it for service, and planned to launch its world voyage in May 2024.
Pat flew to Florida in December 2023, met the management team, and knew she had found the next version of the dream. The answer was clear: back to Plan A, and back to life at sea.