World Adventures with Pat

About me and My Dream

Hi ! My name is Patricia (Pat) Patrick and I am a young semi retiree and avid solo traveler. My roots are in Philadelphia PA, USA. Where I am the oldest sibling of a large and loving family. I have had an extremely blessed career in commercial building construction over the last 40 + years and continue to do consulting today. My passion has always been travel and as a youth I was fortunate enough to visit 46 of the US states, on family camping trips. I have since seen 3 more and plan to see #50, Alaska, next summer. I have also been to a lot Europe, Mexico, Costa Rica and the Caribbean Islands, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, Australia and New Zealand. 

Some may call my quest for the Ultimate Travel Retirement Plan a tad crazy! If you count the worldwide NEWS bleeps and a segment on SNL (Saturday Night Live), as measures, I will have to agree. The plan has had some challenges!! 

My dream started back in May 2022, when I was googling for an article that a neighbor had told me about. It was about a widow who lived on a cruise ship, in lieu of a retirement community, because it was affordable, and she could engage her passion for ballroom dancing ever evening. While reading & searching, I came across an ad for Storylines.com. I investigated and was convinced that I had found my people and my ultimate retirement dream!

 The concept was for a world cruise that would follow the sun, go to all seven continents, 150+ ports, 110+ countries and take three years to circumnavigate. What I loved was that you would be in each port an average of three days (with some areas as long as a week), so that you would have plenty of time to explore and really see the area, rather than the typical cruise port stop of six to eight hours. The community would also have an active role in voting on these durations, based on interest and timing. Each time around the world a different route would be followed.

I signed up for a 12-year deal, which would give me the opportunity to go around the world four times! Also, key for me, was that the price as a solo traveler was not based on the typical double occupancy of the industry. I paid a deposit in May of 2022, with the anticipation that I would be sailing by 2025.

The only challenge I believed back then was having the ship constructed. Storylines had been trying to find the right existing ship that they could modify for this adventure, but they felt it was more prudent to build their own ship to produce everything that they were advertising.

In July 2023, I flew out to Newport Beach, CA, to meet with fellow Storylines residents and get an update from management on how our ship was progressing. I quickly learned that our best hope for sailing would be late 2027, and that date was likely to be pushed back even further because of lack of investors and signed contracts. Coupled with the fact that the ship's builder had gone into bankruptcy and now the Croatian government was now involved in bonding the process! I was very disheartened, because I really clicked with the other solo travelers and loved the concept of the boat. I requested and received my deposit back and ended my contract with Storylines.

Follow my BLOG to see where my story goes from here.