Two well-traveled solo cruisers boarded Star Breeze in San Diego, headed for a 14-day repositioning cruise (meaning lots of sea days) before winding up in French Polynesia.
“In our 70s, we’re definitely not youngsters,” says Omaha-based Curtis Christensen. “When we got on the ship, neither of us had any intention of having a vacation romance. That was the last thing on our minds.
“It is possible to discover love anywhere.” And in this case, it all started at the muster drill.
On that first cruise, Curtis and his now wife Martine Goddard, who lives in Canada’s Victoria, just happened to be the first guests to arrive on deck. “So we introduced ourselves in the time-honored Windstar manner. ‘Hi, my name is…. Where are you from?’ And from that initial connection, Curtis felt comfortable approaching my table at Amphora when he saw me eating by myself. He asked if he could join me.”
The combination of unrushed fine dining, excellent, unobtrusive service and good conversation turned the one-night occurrence into something stronger. “We drifted into dating without being aware of it,” Martine says. “And because it all started very innocently (neither of us were looking for a partner at the time), we were quite candid with each other, which established a strong basis for our later romantic relationship.”
How do you turn a cruise into your own love story?
Good friends by the time Star Breeze arrived in Tahiti, they parted with an affectionate hug and each went on home to their lives, respectively, in Omaha and Victoria. A few months later, Curtis reached out via email to let Martine know he’d booked a repositioning between Tokyo and Anchorage. Might you, he wrote, happen to also be on that voyage?
“A fortuitous tax refund seemed to be a sign from above,” she tells us, “and, well, I liked the man!”
Romance blossomed on that cruise, she says in part, because “crossings are relaxed, unrushed, laid back. There is time to linger over a drink in the bar chatting with friends and time to enjoy a slow, leisurely morning in bed before breakfast. Things are quite different on cruises with multiple ports as one needs to get ready to go on excursions and explore exciting destinations.”
Since then, Curtis and Martine also count cruises-with-ports as a part of their love story. On Star Pride, 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. And then there was a big moment. On a Star Legend sailing in the Baltic, the pair were strolling the medieval streets of Tallinn, “walking hand in hand, and I looked at Curtis and said ‘you know what? I would marry you.’”
“And he said let’s do it.”
They married, exactly one year later, in July 2025.
“Windstar is very much part of our lives,” says Curtis.
This Valentine’s Day, let Curtis’ and Martine’s story inspire you to say yes to new experiences, take the trip, start the conversation, and believe that even the most ordinary moments can turn into something extraordinary.
