Two well-traveled solo cruisers boarded Star Breeze in San Diego, headed for a 14-day repositioning cruise (which means a number of sea days) earlier than winding up in French Polynesia.
“In our 70s, we’re undoubtedly not children,” says Omaha-based Curtis Christensen. “Once we obtained on the ship, neither of us had any intention of getting a trip romance. That was the very last thing on our minds.
“It’s attainable to find love wherever.” And on this case, it began on the muster drill.
On that first cruise, Curtis and his now spouse Martine Goddard, who lives in Canada’s Victoria, simply occurred to be the primary friends to reach on deck. “So we launched ourselves within the time-honored Windstar method. ‘Hello, my identify is…. The place are you from?’ And from that preliminary connection, Curtis felt comfy approaching my desk at Amphora when he noticed me consuming on my own. He requested if he may be a part of me.”
The mixture of unrushed tremendous eating, glorious, unobtrusive service and good dialog turned the one-night prevalence into one thing stronger. “We drifted into courting with out being conscious of it,” Martine says. “And since it began very innocently (neither of us had been on the lookout for a accomplice on the time), we had been fairly candid with one another, which established a powerful foundation for our later romantic relationship.”
How do you flip a cruise into your personal love story?
Good pals by the point Star Breeze arrived in Tahiti, they parted with an affectionate hug and every went on house to their lives, respectively, in Omaha and Victoria. A number of months later, Curtis reached out through electronic mail to let Martine know he’d booked a repositioning between Tokyo and Anchorage. Would possibly you, he wrote, occur to even be on that voyage?
“A fortuitous tax refund gave the impression to be an indication from above,” she tells us, “and, nicely, I preferred the person!”
Romance blossomed on that cruise, she says partly, as a result of “crossings are relaxed, unrushed, laid again. There’s time to linger over a drink within the bar chatting with pals and time to take pleasure in a sluggish, leisurely morning in mattress earlier than breakfast. Issues are fairly completely different on cruises with a number of ports as one must get able to go on excursions and discover thrilling locations.”
Since then, Curtis and Martine additionally rely cruises-with-ports as part of their love story. On Star Pleasure, they’ve traveled to the Caribbean and, on the Legend, to the Greek Isles and Turkey’s Ephesus, interspersed with Atlantic and Pacific crossings on Star Breeze and Wind Surf. After which there was a giant second. On a Star Legend crusing within the Baltic, the pair had been strolling the medieval streets of Tallinn, “strolling hand in hand, and I checked out Curtis and mentioned ‘ what? I might marry you.’”
“And he mentioned let’s do it.”
They married, precisely one yr later, in July 2025.
“Windstar may be very a lot a part of our lives,” says Curtis.
This Valentine’s Day, let Curtis’ and Martine’s story encourage you to say sure to new experiences, take the journey, begin the dialog, and consider that even essentially the most unusual moments can flip into one thing extraordinary.
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