Mark and Beth Hunter used to dream of taking their two young daughters around the globe on a small yacht – but then they dreamed a little bigger.
Instead of a little boat, the parents have instead decided to buy a £1million apartment on a new type of cruise ship.
The family will live in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom complex on an 18-deck residential ship called Narrative, that’s due to take to the seas in 2024. The floating town will offer everything from a 10,000-book library to a cinema, garden farm, spa, microbrewery and medical centre.
Beth, 46, says: ‘We used to think about sailing around the world by ourselves so we took lessons and chartered boats but eventually we realised that there is so much time spent on maintenance, chores and provisioning that we’d only have a day or two every week to explore.
‘There is also a lot to consider with waiting on weather windows and staying up all night on watches during long ocean crossings.
‘The lustre was starting to wear off when we learned there was a new start-up that was building a ship we could buy a flat on. It ticked all the boxes.
‘Instead of a 50ft sailboat we’ll have a 700ft ship – quite the trade-up.
‘We’ll have plenty of time for exploration and adventures since everything is taken care of on board – we won’t have to deal with shopping, cooking, cleaning or laundry.’
Construction is due to begin in Croatia this year on Narrative, which will have 547 residences ranging from one to four bedrooms. They cost up to £6million each for outright purchase, or from £300,000 for a lease of 12 or 24 years.
Storylines, the company behind the ship, says it will have 20 dining and bar venues, three pools, an art studio, bowling alley and pet exercise area. For fitness fans, there will be a running track, gym, yoga studio, golf simulators and a pickleball court.
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Beth and Mark’s two girls, who will be 14 and 16 when Narrative is due to launch, will be able to have lessons in a ‘youth education programme’ on board.
The most innovative aspect of the design is a marina deck at water level where passengers will be able to set off on jet skis or kayaks, or simply dive into the sea, when the ship is moored.
Narrative is expected to circumnavigate the globe every 1,000 days, stopping for several nights in most ports. Residents will be able to come and go as they please, invite friends on board to stay, or rent out their apartments when they’re not at sea.
Beth, who lives with 50-year-old British expat Mark and their daughters in Los Angeles, tells us: ‘We hope our family and friends will sail with us. We’ll be on board 13 weeks at a time, so the plan is to have people come visit for a couple of weeks here and there. We will also be making new friends in our new community, of course.
‘The ship will have internet, so we’ll still be able to stay in touch with all the landlubbers regularly with video calls from exotic destinations.
‘Our plan is to rent out our house when we are at our holiday home, meaning the mortgage will be mostly covered.
‘By renting out our floating home for six months a year, our annual fees on the ship will be also paid in full.’
The couple first met as room-mates when bionics engineer Mark, who’s from the Lake District and lived in London, moved to California 17 years ago.
Beth, an environmental sustainability consultant, grew up in New England. They adopted their children from Russia in 2011.
Beth says: ‘We think it’s important for the girls to have a global education – to experience the beauty of the planet but also the issues that need addressing so they can be a part of the solution someday.
‘We don’t “homeschool our children” – we model what it looks like to stay curious and teach them the tools they need to learn about whatever it is they are interested in.
‘We want them to be critical thinkers and not just absorb what a teacher tells them to learn. We’re most excited about learning and exploring different cultures together as a family out in the real world.’
The girls will be far too busy to be bored, says Beth. ‘They want to start a Scouts troop for younger kids and do child-minding and pet-minding.
‘We play a lot of games together as a family, so we plan to start a board game club.
‘They will have their studies, their computers, their hobbies, their onboard friends and, of course, they’ll have the whole wide world to explore.’
As for days in ports, Beth says: ‘We’ll hire someone to take us around and show us all the highlights. We can ask lots of questions and have a personalised experience seeing the things that interest us most.
‘We lead a privileged life and we want our children to experience first-hand how people live in other parts of the world.
‘We are looking forward to learning about evolution in the Galapagos and ancient civilisations in Giza and Alexandria, as well about our roots in Russia, Scotland and the Azores.
‘Our youngest is interested in animals so we will be sure to do safaris in Africa and we’re also looking forward to seeing the wildlife in Arctic regions.
‘We want to get dive-certified as a family and we like kayaking, snorkelling and hiking together. We’re hoping to convince the kids to walk or cycle the coast-to-coast trail across England.’
Having a holiday home on a ship will be ‘completely different’ from house swaps or hotel stays that the family has done before, Beth says.
‘There will be so much more room to spread out and it will be a lot more comfortable. Mark could be working in the shared work space and one of the kids might be studying in the library while the other is in the art space and I am pottering around the ship’s gardens.
‘We’ll have our own beds and our own things with us. We can’t think of a more comfortable and convenient way to see the world.’
Narrative isn’t the first residential ship – a vessel called The World has been sailing the seas since 2002. But it is part of a new wave of proposed cruise ships that are partly or fully residential, allowing customers to not only be passengers but owners or leaseholders.
Many observers within the traditional cruise industry are sceptical if all the planned residential ships will be built but Storylines says Narrative, which will run on cleaner liquefied natural gas, is in its design and engineering phase and the first steel is due to be cut later this year at the Brodosplit shipyard.
Storylines co-founder Shannon Lee tells us: ‘We’re looking forward to setting sail with an amazing community of travel adventurers. They have the whole world to discover and we are thrilled to enable them to fulfil their lifelong dreams of being global citizens.
‘We are excited to be working alongside Brodosplit Shipyard in Split, Croatia for our first private residence ship to be named MV Narrative.
‘It was important to us to build the ship in Europe and we are thrilled to partner with Brodosplit on the project.’
Dave also writes about cruising on his blog, shipmonk.co.uk
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