Windstar has introduced its first-ever 2025 President’s Thriller Cruise. Created within the spirit of journey, the eight -night cruise, from Athens to Athens, departs on April 19, 2025. Apart from its turnaround port in Greece, every place visited shall be a shock for friends, who will solely be taught the place they’re going the evening earlier than. Marvel how this was impressed? Learn our story on our authentic, unplanned Magical Thriller Cruise that passed off in French Polynesia in February 2024.
All of us anticipated that Star Breeze’s cruise in February, because it started crusing year-round in French Polynesia, could be one thing particular. The ship, changing Wind Spirit as the road’s 12-month designate within the area, would start its homeporting there with an 11-night journey across the Society and Tuamotu Islands, that includes a few of Earth’s most stunning locations, equivalent to Huahine, Rangiroa, Bora Bora and Moorea.
As a result of French Polynesia was saying goodbye, on the identical day, to Wind Spirit (which was heading east to Costa Rica and in the end to the Mediterranean in summer time) and howdy to Star Breeze, this departure proved to be much more spirited than standard. Along side locals — together with French Polynesia’s president, Moetai Brotherson — a festive celebration, dockside, featured a Polynesian-themed send-off that included Tahitian meals, cocktails and music. We combined our personal signature oils manufactured from Polynesian essences and crafted baskets out of palm leaves. There was dancing and singing and essentially the most unimaginable vogue present that highlighted pearl jewellery. The night concluded with a fireworks extravaganza, meant for Tahitian locals and Windstar friends, alike.
For these of us headed out on Star Breeze, little did we all know that tonight’s particular festivities could be simply concerning the final deliberate occasion we might expertise on our voyage. That’s as a result of a trio of cyclones, one after the opposite, have been approaching the Society Islands. Our itinerary gained a touch of uncertainty earlier than we even left the dock.
“In 32 years at sea, I’ve by no means skilled something like this,” Capt. Simon Terry tells me now, simply as our Star Breeze crusing has ended again in Papeete. “I’ve had events the place we’ve modified a port or two due to climate and security. You attempt to choose another that most accurately fits the friends and provides them an excellent expertise. However to vary a whole itinerary on brief discover, with a complete group of islands being below cyclone warnings, it means you’ve acquired to provide you with one thing moderately adventurous.”
Eleven days later, after one tropical cyclone (Class 1), and two cyclonic depressions that certainly, didn’t simply impression our route however actually tossed out the itinerary playbook nearly completely, we arrived again in Tahiti. What we skilled as a substitute grew to become, actually, a visit even higher than any of us anticipated.
Our ‘inaugural voyage’ to the Marquesas Islands
Confronted with an unprecedented collection of storms, Star Breeze’s Capt. Terry tells us “we began getting inklings” on the voyage’s day of departure, “and it quickly grew to become obvious, that with about 48 hours discover, we weren’t going to have the ability to keep the deliberate schedule.”
That was the dangerous information. The excellent news? Having cruised within the area for 36 years, Windstar’s deep relationships within the islands, data of its bays and moorings, and sheer expertise in touring right here, made the captain’s job only a bit simpler: We’d keep away from the storms by heading some 740 miles northeast of Tahiti to a little-known set of archipelagos generally known as the Marquesas Islands. It’s a spot so distant that the majority of its guests arrive by yachts or sailboats. The Marquesas are the closest set of islands in French Polynesia to the equator. It’s a vacation spot that few cruise strains embody in itineraries, and in reality, our trek to the Marquesas was, for Windstar, the primary go to since 1997 (apparently, Windstar’s first “deliberate” cruise to the Marquesas, on Star Breeze, departs in July 2024).
And it’s additionally a area whose climate usually is the alternative of that within the Society Islands. That was an excellent factor. As an alternative of rain and swells impacting each side of our voyage, we sailed easily below sunny blue skies.
Earlier than our cruise, the islands of Nuka Hiva and Hiva Oa didn’t fairly journey off the tongue like Bora Bora and Tahiti do. Most of us in all probability affiliate artist Paul Gauguin with the Society Islands and also you wouldn’t be unsuitable — however he really lived and painted simply as memorably (and died and is buried) on Hiva Oa. The islands’ dramatic peaks are jagged and rugged, shaped as volcanoes, and lack the coral reefs and atolls that clean the waters round Society Islands. Its wildlife and sea life are as rustic as its terrain. Inhabitants in the present day, on its six inhabited islands, is about 9,000. Life right here is so distant from the remainder of French Polynesia that its locals communicate Marquesan (and French), moderately than Tahitian (although flights do function from Tahiti). “Survivor, “the long-running actuality tv present, really filmed right here in 2001.
So it’s undoubtedly off the grid, which created a brand new problem for Windstar: It might probably take years for cruise strains to plan a brand new itinerary — what in case you have simply 48 hours?
“We had a bonus,” says Windstar President Chris Prelog, “as a result of we’ve been such a very long time in French Polynesia.” Prelog, who was onboard for the crusing, and different executives, all performed an element in rolling out a wholly new cruise expertise, however the heavy lifting was as much as Star Breeze’s officers, employees and Windstar’s French Polynesian attachee. “Our officers and employees have been calling their native contacts. There was a variety of creativity utilized due to our data and expertise. And the trouble was by no means about simply getting the ship right into a port and exhibiting friends one thing stunning. It’s about: How will we create experiences that may have interaction and join them to those new locations?”
How do you create a ready-made cruise within the Marquesas?
A way of household permeated Star Breeze as we modified course and sailed for the Marquesas. So many people have been excited to expertise an journey we hadn’t imagined, and this created a buzz of anticipation that bonded us. So too did the transparency of the officers, who, in between scrambling navigational charts, planning new shore excursions in a distant atmosphere, and organizing native leisure, managed to make us really feel like we have been a part of this expedition.
Says Prelog, “We shared a variety of info as we developed the plan. Capt. Terry introduced passengers with the climate charts, explaining that the path was uncharted territory.”
And we knew, Capt. Terry provides, “once we thought of going to the Marquesas, we acknowledged the truth that it’s a distinct proposition from the Society and Tuamotu islands. The water’s rougher, the currents are stronger, and the islands are surrounded by extra excessive wildlife, equivalent to tiger sharks and hammerheads. It’s not an excellent place to open the marina.”
You additionally needed to really feel for the ship’s shore tour staff, which was continually adapting to unfolding circumstances, ripping up present shore ex tickets each day (some occasions a number of occasions in a single day), and continually pivoting. On our second day within the Marquesas, windy situations made tender transfers too harmful, so as soon as once more, the plan modified. This time we headed early to our third island, Hiva Oa, and by the point we set foot on land, the shore ex staff had already organized for buses to take us to Atuona, its fundamental village, the place we might poke round its handful of retailers, go to the Paul Gauguin cultural middle, and luxuriate in a seaside occasion, full with refreshments and actions just like the tying of pareos (French Polynesia’s stunning sq. cloth items that may be tailored to scarves and seaside garb by the best way you modify them).
Ultimately, it wasn’t simply our fellow vacationers and Windstar’s employees and crew that bonded so strongly. Touring to probably the most distant corners on Earth meant that locals have been as excited to fulfill us as we have been them.
“Once we arrived on Hiva Oa, I met Mayor Joëlle Frebault at a tribal dance that locals hosted for us there,” Prelog shares. “I requested her, what number of vacationers are on the island in the present day — with out Windstar. She mentioned, 22, and advised me that she at all times is aware of what number of guests. ‘We make them glad,’ she advised me.”
Certainly. In probably the most splendid deck barbecues I’ve ever skilled on Windstar, the mayor introduced her household and mates. There was a music and dance group whose performers ranged from youngsters to adults. Within the course of, Hiva Oa’s tradition, artwork and folks have been transplanted onto Star Breeze itself. The connections felt actual; at one level I requested an area visitor to inform me the story of the fable being carried out and he was delighted to share it.
“At Windstar, we’ve at all times felt so strongly about bringing folks collectively to make new connections, new mates,” Stijn Creupelandt, Windstar’s vice chairman of resort operations and product growth,tells me as we’re reliving reminiscences from the journey after debarking. “To see that taking place on the ship, heading towards a brand-new vacation spot, was great to see. And it’s what we stand for.”
Magical thriller cruise
A number of days into our loopy, sudden itinerary, a couple of of us, all loving the adventurous spin the journey has taken, began dubbing the journey Windstar’s “magical thriller cruise” (with a nod to the Beatles’ album). President Prelog determined to take the idea a bit additional. “Visitors impressed me to create simply this type of journey on a future Windstar cruise,” he says. “What we noticed from our friends on this cruise is the belief now we have with them, the belief that Windstar will do the fitting factor. And so they felt it so strongly, they urged us to create an expertise like this — with simply as a lot thriller (and from our facet, maybe a bit extra time to plan). And so, in our conventional sense of agility, now we have created our first ever President’s Thriller Cruise. Prelog is alongside for the journey and even he gained’t know the port schedule earlier than the friends on board.
That eight-night cruise is already within the works. It’ll happen on April 19, an Athens to Athens voyage on Star Legend, by which each day’s port of name shall be a thriller till the evening earlier than. Feeling adventurous? Be part of us.
Editor’s Notice: If you happen to’re focused on a go to to the distant Marquesas, Windstar’s first deliberate cruise to the area in 27 years is obtainable on July 4, 2024. The 14-day voyage, spherical journey from Papeete, will go to the Marquesas’ Fatu Hiva, Hiva Oa and Nuku Hiva, along with traditional French Polynesian locations like Bora Bora, Moorea and Rangiroa. A 21-day choice, departing on March 26, 2025, can be accessible.
