A young couple have ditched their house and set sail for good – swapping everyday life for full-time living on cruise ships.
Katrina Middleton, 29, and her husband Kevin, 43, sold up in Scotland and now travel the world at sea, all while holding down their day jobs.
And despite spending hundreds of nights on the waves, the pair insist they have no regrets.
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Katrina, a CRM marketing manager, says they’ve “always been cruise people” but decided to take things to the next level.
“Waking up somewhere new is something you never get used to,” Katrina, from Montrose, Scotland, told What’s The Jam.
“You go to sleep and when you open the curtains in the morning you are somewhere completely different.
“We switch off better and definitely less stressed than we are at home.
“We would work all through the day and night at home, whereas on a cruise when we are done with work, we are done and really switch off.”
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The idea first came after the couple spotted Kevin’s “dream trip” – a cruise through the Suez Canal with a stop in Petra, Jordan.
Although safety concerns meant that the route changed, they snapped up a 35-night sailing from Barcelona to Singapore instead.
Katrina said: “Neither of us could take 35 days of annual leave, so we thought, why don’t we just take our office with us?”
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Now, the duo live and work from whichever ship they’re on, carefully planning trips up to 18 months in advance to bag the best deals.
Katrina said: “We plan it quite carefully and tend to book 12 to 18 months ahead to get the best deals.
“Sometimes we’ll do back-to-back cruises, finishing one sailing and straight onto the next without going home in between.
“Other times we will come home for a bit, especially for things like family events.
“We always know roughly where we are going to be; it just doesn’t look like a traditional calendar.
“We have spent 307 nights at sea so far and we are not planning to slow down.”
The couple eventually sold their home in Arbroath after realising they were “barely there”.
Katrina said: “It sounds more dramatic than it was, we just gradually realised the house was becoming a place we visited rather than lived in, and that felt like a waste.
“So we simplified. It suits how we live now.”
Balancing work with life at sea takes planning, but Katrina has found her rhythm.
She often works in quiet public areas in the mornings before heading back to her cabin later in the day.
But it’s not all smooth sailing – especially when it comes to WiFi.
She said: “It’s not cheap on board, around £12 to £15 a day for a package, and we buy one and hotspot everything else off it.
“I also use an eSIM called Gigsky which works at sea, which is great for posting content and staying connected without the roaming charges.”
With changing time zones and destinations, no two days are the same, although Katrina sticks to UK working hours.
She added: “The balance comes from treating the cruise like a floating base, not a constant holiday.
“When I’m working, I’m properly working.
“The other side of the balance is making sure you actually use the ship.
“It is very easy to just work, eat, sleep, repeat, and forget where you are.
“So I will check the daily planner, pick one or two things I want to do, whether that’s a show, a quiet drink, or just time outside, and build that into the day as well.
“In reality, it is not about perfectly balancing work and cruise life every single day.
“Some days lean heavily towards work, others feel more like a holiday.
“But across the whole trip, it evens out.”
While friends and family were mostly supportive, some thought the move was a bit bonkers.
Katrina said: “The harder conversations are the ones where you can see people want to ask ‘but what about settling down?’
“Which is funny because we feel more settled now than we ever did owning a house in Scotland and going to the same office every day.
“We are just settled differently.
“None of our family has actually cruised yet which feels like a massive oversight.
“We have talked about getting my mum to join us for one of our upcoming sailings, which would be really special.”
Life onboard isn’t without its challenges, though.
Katrina said: “The cabin size gets to you.
“We love each other but 35 nights in a small space will test any relationship.
“We have learned to build in what we call ‘escape schedules’; one of us takes a walk, the other gets the cabin to themselves for an hour.
“It sounds funny but it helps.
“And missing people – I have always been a homebody, which surprises people when I say we live like this.
“We stay connected with family constantly but you do feel the distance sometimes, especially at Christmas.”
Despite that, Katrina says the lifestyle has given them something priceless – simplicity.
She said: “No bills, no commute, no supermarket runs.
“Your food, your accommodation, your entertainment, getting to a new country, it is all included.
“We pay around £80 to £100 per person per night on our cruises, and when you factor in everything that covers, it compares really favourably to how we used to live.”
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