At 29 years old and tired of the corporate routine, a young man leaves his 11-year career, sells almost all his possessions, buys a sailboat, and sets off from Oregon to Hawaii accompanied only by his cat.

Written by Romário Pereira de Carvalho

Published on 22/06/2026 at 09:38

Be the first to react!

At 29 years old, Oliver Widger left an 11-year career, sold his belongings, bought a sailboat, and began a journey from Oregon to Hawaii accompanied only by his cat Phoenix

Last year, at 29 years old, Oliver Widger left an 11-year career at a tire company, sold almost all of his belongings, and used retirement funds to buy a sailboat. With no sailing experience, he spent a year living on the vessel before departing from Oregon to Hawaii with his cat, Phoenix.

Watch the video

Oliver Widger leaves career and turns dream into plan

The change began when Widger decided to end the corporate routine he had maintained for over a decade.

Tired of work and financial obligations, he decided to put into practice his long-held desire to travel the world.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

A year of preparation inside the sailboat

When he started the project, Oliver Widger had no experience with sailing. He also didn’t know the procedures for boat maintenance nor mastered creating content for social media.

For approximately a year, he lived on the sailboat and focused his routine on learning. During this period, he developed navigation skills, performed services on the vessel, and reduced expenses to finance the trip.

The savings included a simple diet, based for months on rice and beans. In addition to his retirement money, he used credit cards, starting the crossing with the expectation of reaching Hawaii still in debt.

His initial plan was to find work in the archipelago and stay there for six months to a year. The income would be used to pay off the amounts accumulated during the preparation for the new life.

At 29 years old and tired of life tied to work and bills, a man quits an 11-year job, sells his belongings, uses retirement to buy a sailboat, and goes to live at sea with the cat — Image: Social media

Crossing began in Oregon heading to Hawaii

Accompanied only by the cat Phoenix, Widger left the Oregon coast heading to Hawaii. On the 13th day of the crossing, he was more than 600 nautical miles off the coast of California.

At that moment, he expected to reach the destination around May 25. The preparation, life on the boat, and the journey began to be documented on profiles identified as Sailing with Phoenix.

The story gained traction when the sailboat entered open sea. Tens of thousands of people began to follow the updates and the location of the vessel, while some users created accounts dedicated to tracking the coordinates.

Donations exceed goal and change financial plans

Widger launched a GoFundMe campaign aiming to raise $10,000 to pay off credit card debts. The mobilization exceeded the goal and gathered more than $30,000.

With the donations, he no longer immediately depended on a job in Hawaii to cover the costs of the move. The priority became completing the crossing and arriving safely at the destination.

The journey marked a break from the life maintained for 11 years. Widger began living on the sailboat, accompanied daily by Phoenix, while planning to continue sailing and documenting his passage through different places online.

This article was prepared based on the information provided in the source material about Oliver Widger and the Sailing with Phoenix project, with data, numbers, and statements preserved as per the consulted content.

0 Comments

most recent

older Most voted

At 29 years old and tired of the corporate routine, a young man leaves his 11-year career, sells almost all his possessions, buys a sailboat, and sets off from Oregon to Hawaii accompanied only by his cat.

At 29 years old, Oliver Widger left an 11-year career, sold his belongings, bought a sailboat, and began a journey from Oregon to Hawaii accompanied only by his cat Phoenix

Oliver Widger leaves career and turns dream into plan

A year of preparation inside the sailboat

Crossing began in Oregon heading to Hawaii

Donations exceed goal and change financial plans

In the cold desert of Ladakh, where it hardly rains, engineer Sonam Wangchuk created the ice stupa, a tower that freezes winter water and stores it for irrigating crops in the spring, a simple engineering feat that mimics nature.

Almost 6,000 residents live concentrated along a single street nearly 9 km long in the interior of Poland. Houses form a continuous row, and behind them, narrow agricultural strips emerge, creating one of the most unusual rural patterns in Europe.

Libya built over 4,000 kilometers of underground pipelines to bring water from the Sahara to coastal cities in a project that the government itself called the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Chinese woman planted trees for decades while sand buried part of her house, received $5,000 from an American in 1999, and helped transform the desert into a forest of 8 million trees in China.

Desert sand, previously discarded for being too smooth for concrete, becomes an ecological brick in the United Arab Emirates, dispensing with Portland cement, curing at room temperature, and attempting to transform dunes useless for construction into raw material for a new arid engineering.

They planted a sea of eucalyptus to produce cellulose, but the monoculture turned into a green desert, dried up springs and rivers, and pushed families out of regions in Minas Gerais and Bahia.

Júlia Pimentel, an 11-year-old from Minas Gerais, independently invented a new formula to calculate the square root using simple addition and multiplication, and her method was published in one of the most important mathematical scientific journals in Brazil.

Saudi takes his Toyota Hilux 4×4, leaves Riyadh, crosses 23 countries, and drives about 6,000 kilometers for almost three weeks to northern Norway to fulfill the dream of seeing the northern lights.

Leaving the charger plugged in without a phone consumes energy or is it a myth? Experts call the phenomenon “phantom consumption” and warn that dozens of devices on standby can add up on the bill over the year.

Toyota Sienna becomes a “VIP lounge on wheels” in Brazil after receiving a Chinese luxury kit, seats with massage, Starlink, refrigerator, and a 245 hp hybrid engine, targeting high-income families, artists, and executive transport in an almost million-dollar van.

An 84-year-old mother wakes up before midnight in Japan, keeps a family bakery open for 55 years, and sells cheap handmade bread; the shop in Fukuoka produces up to 400 units a day with the help of her son.

Tired of seeing her salary disappear with the mortgage, a 24-year-old sells her £125,000 house, buys a van for £13,000, invests £6,000, transforms the vehicle into a home, and decides to live on the roads of Europe.

At 29 years old and tired of the corporate routine, a young man leaves his 11-year career, sells almost all his possessions, buys a sailboat, and sets off from Oregon to Hawaii accompanied only by his cat.

At 29 years old, Oliver Widger left an 11-year career, sold his belongings, bought a sailboat, and began a journey from Oregon to Hawaii accompanied only by his cat Phoenix

Oliver Widger leaves career and turns dream into plan

A year of preparation inside the sailboat

Crossing began in Oregon heading to Hawaii

Donations exceed goal and change financial plans

In the cold desert of Ladakh, where it hardly rains, engineer Sonam Wangchuk created the ice stupa, a tower that freezes winter water and stores it for irrigating crops in the spring, a simple engineering feat that mimics nature.

Almost 6,000 residents live concentrated along a single street nearly 9 km long in the interior of Poland. Houses form a continuous row, and behind them, narrow agricultural strips emerge, creating one of the most unusual rural patterns in Europe.

Libya built over 4,000 kilometers of underground pipelines to bring water from the Sahara to coastal cities in a project that the government itself called the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Chinese woman planted trees for decades while sand buried part of her house, received $5,000 from an American in 1999, and helped transform the desert into a forest of 8 million trees in China.

Desert sand, previously discarded for being too smooth for concrete, becomes an ecological brick in the United Arab Emirates, dispensing with Portland cement, curing at room temperature, and attempting to transform dunes useless for construction into raw material for a new arid engineering.

They planted a sea of eucalyptus to produce cellulose, but the monoculture turned into a green desert, dried up springs and rivers, and pushed families out of regions in Minas Gerais and Bahia.

Júlia Pimentel, an 11-year-old from Minas Gerais, independently invented a new formula to calculate the square root using simple addition and multiplication, and her method was published in one of the most important mathematical scientific journals in Brazil.

Saudi takes his Toyota Hilux 4×4, leaves Riyadh, crosses 23 countries, and drives about 6,000 kilometers for almost three weeks to northern Norway to fulfill the dream of seeing the northern lights.

An 84-year-old mother wakes up before midnight in Japan, keeps a family bakery open for 55 years, and sells cheap handmade bread; the shop in Fukuoka produces up to 400 units a day with the help of her son.

Tired of seeing her salary disappear with the mortgage, a 24-year-old sells her £125,000 house, buys a van for £13,000, invests £6,000, transforms the vehicle into a home, and decides to live on the roads of Europe.

As the polar cold wave freezes the South this week, archaeology reminds us how the Kaingang dug underground houses on the Santa Catarina plateau to survive frosts millennia ago.

Federal Police involved in the case to identify the person responsible for hacking the Civil Defense system, which sent ten false alerts, frightened residents of different capitals, and turned messages about real risks into notifications with “misanthropy” and even alien attacks.

Saudi takes his Toyota Hilux 4×4, leaves Riyadh, crosses 23 countries, and drives about 6,000 kilometers for almost three weeks to northern Norway to fulfill the dream of seeing the northern lights.

Leaving the charger plugged in without a phone consumes energy or is it a myth? Experts call the phenomenon “phantom consumption” and warn that dozens of devices on standby can add up on the bill over the year.

Toyota Sienna becomes a “VIP lounge on wheels” in Brazil after receiving a Chinese luxury kit, seats with massage, Starlink, refrigerator, and a 245 hp hybrid engine, targeting high-income families, artists, and executive transport in an almost million-dollar van.

An 84-year-old mother wakes up before midnight in Japan, keeps a family bakery open for 55 years, and sells cheap handmade bread; the shop in Fukuoka produces up to 400 units a day with the help of her son.

Tired of seeing her salary disappear with the mortgage, a 24-year-old sells her £125,000 house, buys a van for £13,000, invests £6,000, transforms the vehicle into a home, and decides to live on the roads of Europe.