83.4 F
Evansville
Saturday, June 21, 2025

Good morning, Captain, Sir!

Soon I will sail on this beautiful ship, the Mandalay. My husband and I, along with another couple, will celebrate 25 years of marriage on her as we sail from Grenada.

We’ve sailed on Mandalay before, in March 2004, with the “old” windjammer. Last year Florida tourism entrepreneur Charles J. Kropke brought back the freewheeling sail cruises through a new version of Windjammer Barefoot Cruises. He purchased the defunct company’s three-masted Mandalay and based his company, Sail Windjammer, on the heritage of the old company started by Mike Burke in 1947, after a night of drinking. Burke woke up the next morning and found himself the owner of a $600 sailboat he named the Hangover.

Despite all its troubles at the end, Windjammer Barefoot Cruises through the years gained a legion of wildly devoted fans. “Windjammer did not die because it was more than a company. It was a culture,” Kropke has been quoted as saying.

The Mandalay was built in 1923 for financier E. F. Hutton and his wife, Marjorie Merriweather Post. On our first trip aboard, we sailed from Panama. Arriving on the isthmus a day early, we enjoyed the hotel’s views of the Bridge of The Americas, spanning the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal.

Aboard Mandalay, our destination was the San Blas islands, an archipelago of 378 islands, of which only 49 are inhabited – by the Kuna Indians. Unlike other windjammer trips we’d taken, which visited popular yachting destinations like the U.S. and U.K. Virgin Islands, St. Maarten, and St. Thomas, the only boats we saw during our week in the San Blas islands were the dugouts used by the Kuna, who eagerly sold us crabs from their boat — to be prepared for us by the chef!

I’m eager to board Mandalay again — this time in Grenada.

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Kristen K. Tucker
Kristen K. Tucker
Kristen K. Tucker formed Tucker Publishing Group, Inc., along with her husband, Todd, in September 1999 and published the first issue of Evansville Living in March 2000. Kristen, publisher and editor of Evansville Living, holds a bachelor’s degree in public relations and English from Western Kentucky University and a master’s degree in liberal studies from the University of Southern Indiana. Kristen has recently served on the board of directors of The Catholic Foundation of Evansville, the Board of Advisors for the IU Medical School Evansville, and Indiana Landmarks. In 2007, she helped found the Women’s Fund of Vanderburgh County. She also is a member of the 125-year-old Social Literary Club. Kristen is the 2003 Athena Award recipient and the 2006 recipient of the Indiana Commission for Women’s Torchbearer Award. Tucker Publishing Group, Inc., magazines have won dozens of awards through the years from the City & Regional Magazine Association, the Advertising Federation of Evansville, the Evansville Design Group, and the Indiana Society of Professional Journalists. A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Kristen moved with her family to Evansville, her father’s hometown, in 1971. She attended Caze Elementary School, and Castle Jr. and Castle Sr. High Schools in Newburgh, Indiana. Kristen and Todd have two adult sons, Maxwell and Jackson. Kristen enjoys walking, travel, Pilates, and reading.

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