With all the stories that occasionally pop about people basically living on cruise ships, including one last week about a man with 870 cruises under his belt, it's not surprising that someone has taken the hint and is planning a cruise ship designed to be literally an apartment house afloat.
A company called Storylines has announced plans for an "affordable" perpetual cruise ship, set sail in 2024; it's just announced construction is to start soon at Croatia's Brodosplit shipyard. The vessel will bear the name Narrative; no guesses offered as to what sister ships might be named.
The idea isn't totally new: a ship called The World has been doing the same thing for the past ten years, but it's a luxury operation with 164 apartments, while Storyline is building a ship with more than four times as many and with lower prices.
But not low prices: Apartments start at $1 million for the life of the ship and go up to about $8 million. The company apparently anticipates a long life, because they're also offering 24-year leases starting at $600,000. The ship will include all the usual amenities, plus an education center that can serve as school for resident children.
The story is getting a lot of play in media that should know something, but none of the articles offer much background on the company's founders or their financing. Some, including USA Today, write about it as if it already exists!
A brief survey of their website, which is heavy on stock photography and created images, gives brief CVs for the founders and some other executives; they seem to be deep in real estate, software and IT, and very shallow in anything to do with operating a cruise line. Gumbo may be over-cautious, but he thinks you ought to wait a while before considering buying!
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