When sailing from Southampton....when do we adjust our watches

[jodanuke]

Strange question maybe lol But we usually fly-cruise and have never sailed from the UK before. We then alter our watches when we are flying, so as to be with the local time when we land.

 

Does the ships time stay the same on a Med cruise or does it alter, along with our watches?

 

If so, doe we change when we leave port, the day at sea, or ajust times when we arrive at the first stop?

[jeanlyon]

You change them when the ship's officer tells you to. Sometimes it's when you go to bed, other times they do it at noon, which I always find weird. Also, it's in the daily newspaper.

[bigpete47uk]

In addition, your cabin steward normally leaves a card on your bedside table, in the evening, to remind you to alter your watches before you retire.

Pete.

[EOS-User]

We always adjust our watches (if required) just before going to bed; in preparation for the next day's time-zone. As the prior poster says; it's published in the daily newssheet which will be left in your cabin before you retire for the night...

 

If you're crusing only to the Western Med; there will be a 1 hour time change (+1) at some stage between Southampton, and entering the Gibraltar Straight, and vice-versa on the way back (-1) ...

 

If you're crusing to the far Eastern Med, there may be a further 1 hour time-change dependant on how far across you're going...

[jodanuke]

Thanks folks :)

[simonpjd]

Back in the dark ages when I was a watch keeping officer at sea we used to try and make it that the sun was more or less at its zenith at 12 noon and thats when you would see us all out there on the bridge wing with our sextants. So we used to change clocks by 30 mins or 1 hour as required at midnight. What actually happened was that each of the 3 overnight watches were 10/20 minutes longer/shorter so the time change was shared between the watches.

But yes - if a time change is going on there will be a note on your bunk when you retire to zzzzzshire telling you about clock changes. On cruises it is 99% always an hour change but may be 30 mins if you are visiting a port with that difference - for example Singapore was GMT + 7.5 hours. I don't know whether it still is but it was back in my day.

[Thejuggler]

All changes on our cruise were done at 2am.

 

IIRC from our trip there Singapore is now 8 hours ahead of GMT.

 

India has half hour time zone - 5.5 hours ahead of GMT. Very handy if you have an analogue watch. No need to change it, just wear it upside down and the time will be right!

[Merlin7]

Australia too has half hour time zones.

[KarenR_UK]

We always adjust our watches (if required) just before going to bed; in preparation for the next day's time-zone. As the prior poster says; it's published in the daily newssheet which will be left in your cabin before you retire for the night...

 

If you're crusing only to the Western Med; there will be a 1 hour time change (+1) at some stage between Southampton, and entering the Gibraltar Straight, and vice-versa on the way back (-1) ...

 

If you're crusing to the far Eastern Med, there may be a further 1 hour time-change dependant on how far across you're going...

 

You need to watch the order of the ports as well

 

I once had 4 time changes on a 7 day cruise - UK - Spain (+1) - Portugal (-1) - Spain (+1) & Guernsey (-1) - I was exhausted at the end of it :D

 

Another 'problem' cruise was a 16 day one to Venice - not the number of changes, but the fact some of the changes were in the middle of the run of 5 port days - it was just something we had to take into account when planning evening entertainment & the following days shore excursions :)

 

The last few cruises I have been on we haven't got the final hour 'back' until the final night.