Last spring, Oliver Widger quit his corporate job of 11 years, liquidated his 401(k) and bought a sailboat. His goal: to set sail from his home in Oregon and voyage around the world, starting with a first leg of 2,400 miles to Hawaii.
Mr. Widger’s journey is different from other ocean voyages in two notable ways. For starters, he had no prior sailing experience before he paid $50,000 for a used Com-Pac 33 boat, which he named Phoenix, after his rescue cat. Second, that cat, a female calico, is his only companion on the trip.
Because this is 2025, Mr. Widger is hardly alone on the high seas. Using a Starlink satellite system for internet, he has been documenting his trip in real time on social media. And since he departed on April 30, his accounts have taken off, with nearly one million followers on Instagram and 700,000 on TikTok.
Mr. Widger, 29, has longish brown hair, a scruffy beard and an earnest “hey, dude” manner. He opens each day’s video diary with some variation of “Hello, this is Day 9 of sailing across the Pacific Ocean, alone with my cat, from Oregon to Hawaii.”
He was inspired to go on his adventure after being diagnosed with Klippel-Feil syndrome, a rare bone disorder in which vertebrae in the neck are fused together. It can cause muscle weakness and even paralysis.
