The luxury cruise liner stranded in Belfast for four months returned to the city, only hours after it had set sail to cheers and applause from the 125 passengers who had thought when they departed on Monday they were finally on their way around the globe.
The Villa Vie Odyssey only made it a few miles from Belfast harbour on Monday night before it dropped anchor again in the mouth of Belfast Lough, where it stayed overnight and for much of Tuesday. Passengers were told it would finally depart at 11pm on Tuesday.
The chief executive of Villa Vie Residences, Mikael Petterson, said administrative paperwork still had to be completed before the liner could finally depart to undertake its inaugural three-year, round-the-world cruise.
“We still have some administrative paperwork to be finished before leaving the Belfast area,” he said.
Petterson said the passengers would not disembark when the ship returned to port, and the vessel would leave when the paperwork was completed before midnight.
Unexpected repairs that began in May kept the liner in port, forcing its passengers – most of them from the US – to while away four months in Airbnb rentals, exploring Europe independently or accepting a holiday in the Canaries courtesy of the ship’s owners.
After a couple of false starts on Monday, the ship was readied for boarding shortly before 9pm to scenes of joy in the cruise terminal where its passengers had spent hours wondering whether they would finally be starting their dream voyage.
One passenger, John Frim, said on Tuesday he was a bit confused by the situation but “happy to be home” and to have slept in his “own bed” onboard the vessel for the first time.
Speaking to reporters at the cruise terminal on Monday, Petterson said he was “a little stressed” as efforts were made to clear “a few last-minute things”.
“It’s administrative paperwork. We needed the right person to press the button, at the end of the day. It’s been done and we’re putting the vessel in motion right now. The harbourmaster has been in direct contact with the MD. We’ve been expecting this outcome for hours,” he said.
He said departure was expected just before midnight, when the terminal closes. “The good news is that we have complete clearance and we will be out of here very, very, very soon.”
But he had spoken too soon. The Marine Tracker website showed the ship anchored for most of Monday just north of Bangor in Belfast Lough.
Asked how he would remember Belfast, Petterson said: “Your summer is horrible” and “you can’t cook to save your lives, but you do know how to drink.”
Andy Garrison, 75, a passenger who had arrived later in August for his trip, said the passengers had been resilient while waiting for the repairs to be completed.
He said he liked Belfast a lot but was “so happy to be sailing away”.
“I’m ready to go. We stop briefly in Brest, France, and then we go to Spain, we go to Portugal, and we head across the ocean to go to the Bahamas, where we stay for a while in the Bahamas,” he said.
Cyndi Grzybowski, 69, from Appling, Georgia, said she had always wanted to see the world and was excited about the start of the voyage.
Gian Perroni, from Vancouver in Canada, and Angela Harsanyi, from Colorado in the US, got to know each other and became engaged while they waited for the cruise to begin.
“My better half passed away three years ago so this is giving me an opportunity to get off the farm, literally, and see the world, which is something that I have wanted to do,” Harsanyi told reporters on Monday.
The luxury cruise offers rentals from 35 to 120 days, or “villas” can be bought at prices ranging from £90,000 to £260,000. Owning a villa onboard guarantees the room for a minimum of 15 years, but the ownership stays valid for the entire operation of the ship.
