Makes "Gilligan's Island" look like fun

My idea of a cruise is taking the 90-minute fast boat from Boston to Provincetown. So I would never, ever, ever in a billion years sign up for a three-year cruise. 

But chacun à son goût, and for  Joe and Kara Youssef, the goût was selling most of what they owned - including two apartments - and taking most of their savings out and putting it all on a dream: a multi-year round the world trip of a lifetime. Their first step along the way: getting themselves to Istanbul, where the ship was suppose to cast off on November 1st. 

They were hanging around Istanbul, waiting to leave when, in late November, they learned that the trip was canceled.  

Here's what the Youssefs had signed up for:

The Turkish company, Miray Cruises, had announced the cruise, called Life at Sea, in March. It claimed it would be the longest cruise ever — 382 port calls over 1,095 days — and a community at sea, with opportunities to explore the globe. Starlink internet and a business center would allow passengers to work remotely. (Source: NY Times)

The potential cruise didn't come cheap. I don't know what the Youssefs bought into, but giving all that they sold, etc, it likely wasn't the lowend $90K for a pokey inside cabin. 

After the cruise was announced, sales were promising, Within short order half of the 400 cabins had been reserved. Unfortunately, Miray Cruises was biting off more than it could chew. A three year trip, with 382 stops, is a pretty complex endeavor. You need a good sized ship to carry all that community: cruisers and staff. And you can't just sail from one port to another in hopes that they'll let you dock there. You need to secure docking rights for all 382 stops. And you need to make sure you have funding to carry the whole thing off. (Trips of this duration - three years - are rare. Most long-time cruises are no more than a year because of the complexity of the logistics.)

Miray has promised refunds, but precious little has been given back to the folks who put their money down. The Youssefs had made a deposit of $80K, and they're still waiting for a refund.

In an interview in December, Vedat Ugurlu, the owner of Miray, blamed a lack of financing and interest for the cruise’s cancellation.

“We tried everything to find a solution, but at the end of the day we couldn’t get the investors and we couldn’t sell enough cabins,” he said.

Lack of financing? Lack of interest? Well, duh. 

But that begs the question, where did the Youssefs $80K go??? That's what Kara Youssef would like to know. 

“They kept leading us on, making us hold out hope until the very last minute, just days before we were supposed to depart,” she said. “We sold everything we have to make this dream happen. We feel completely defeated.”

She's not the only one.  

Despite having never been on a cruise, Ohio marketing professional Keri Witman, who is in her sixties, was looking to shake her life up.

She liked the ability to travel while continuing to work. “This seemed like the perfect opportunity,” she said.

Ms. Witman was one of the first to book in April. She asked a lawyer to look into the company and, after finding no red flags, placed a $5,000 deposit for her $185,120 cabin and put her house up for sale.

Et al. 

Behind the scenes there was all sorts of pisspoor planning going on involving the idea/marketing guy  (Mikael Petterson) who'd conceived the notion of the three-year cruise, ship owners (since the idea guy didn't have a ship), brokers, et al.  

The owner of Miray (Vedat Ugurlu) thought his ship, the MV Gemini, would be a good fit for a three-year, round the trip voyage, even though the Gemini had "mainly [been] used for excursions between Turkey and the Greek islands." 

Which apparently didn't raise any eyebrows, even though it strikes me as something of the equivalent of renting Gilligan's S.S. Minnow to cross the Pacific, even though it'd never been at sea for more than a three-hour tour. (A three-hour tour...)

Folks - though not enough of them - began signing up, but questions started to emerge around technical details like whether the Minnow, errrrr, the Gemini could "even hold enough fuel to sail between some of the more distant ports," which would be required if you were going around the world and needed to cross the Altantic and the Pacific. 

Another question was whether the Gemini was going to be large enough to provide enough space for the passengers to get out of their cabins and mingle with the community, and actually have a satisfying "Life at Sea," which is how the cruise was being marketed. Three years is a lot of time to live in a ship cabin...

There were also plenty of financial difficulties, like how the deposits (let alone full fares paid upfront, which is what Miray wanted) would be processed. There was a question of which bank accounts to use. At one point, Miray's head guy - who owns a Florida pizza parlor - wanted deposits to go into the pizza parlor's account. Doesn't sound fishy at all to me.

No escrow account was ever set up, no bonds to protect deposits. 

With all kinds of craziness around payments, the idea guy asked Miray to refund everyone's deposit. And wary passengers started canceling. Then the idea guy quit the deal entirely. He'd "dismantled" his brainchild, Life at Sea, and tossed responsibility/accountability into Miray's lap.

Then there was a switcheroo, in which Miray attempted to acquire a larger ship which they claimed was "due to unprecedented demand." All this while the cruise wasn't fully sold out, and passengers were canceling. 

Everything, it seems, was at sea, other than the cruise itself. 

Needless to say, there's been plenty of back and forth between the two main parties, the Life at Sea idea guy and Miray the pizza guy. 

Meanwhile, potential passengers continued to make plans - and payments. Those who voiced their doubts about the cruise's viability were told to read the fine print in the contract, which entitled them to a paltry 10% refund if they opted out. And they "were assured that the ship would sail, even with as few as two passengers." 

Two passengers you say? The professor? The movie star? Mary Ann? The millionaire and his wife?

In late November, the cruise was officially canceled, but most passengers are still waiting for refunds. 

Meanwhile, the idea guy and the Miray pizza guy "are now separately working on other three-year cruises, to launch next year." (My guess: someone will be trying to get the original passengers to put their refunds towards the next pipedream cruise.)

I hope that all potential travelers have access to google and can save themselves both money and heartache. And hope that the Youssefs, Witman, and the others see some of their money.

Finally, I'd like to note that Gilligan's Island ran for three seasons on TV in the sixties. I think I'd rather take my chances being marooned on Gilligan's Island for three years than sign up for one of these ferkakta tours. At least you wouldn't be out your life savings.