Will a ship leave port to sail smack into a Tropical Storm?

[EdmondDantes]

So DW & I are scheduled to be in Miami to leave on the Norwegian Sky on Friday. Unfortunately, it appears TS Emily may also be in town that day. What is the standard operating procedure for such an event?

 

Do the ships sail the opposite direction? I saw something in the site headline story about one of the Princess ships not leaving port.

 

Wondering if it is time to start thinking about cancelling...

 

Many thanks,

[paul929207]

So DW & I are scheduled to be in Miami to leave on the Norwegian Sky on Friday. Unfortunately, it appears TS Emily may also be in town that day. What is the standard operating procedure for such an event?

 

Do the ships sail the opposite direction? I saw something in the site headline story about one of the Princess ships not leaving port.

 

Wondering if it is time to start thinking about cancelling...

 

Many thanks,

Cruise lines will look at the current and forecasted conditions and determine what is safest for the passengers, crew and ship.

 

As to cancelling, do you have insurance that covers cancelling for any reason? If not, you will not get any money back or future credit.

[eh2zed]

Cruise lines will work around storms. Depending on circumstances they may delay getting to a port, not leave a port on time, cruise around a storm area, substitute a port or miss a port entirely. In any event I wouldn't cancel because of storm warnings. IMO

[Underwatr]

We were due to sail out of NYC on a Friday night right into the path of Hurricane Earl last September. The Captain opted to remain in port until 5 AM the next day and we skipped our Newport port of call. The net benefit to us was an unscheduled sea day to explore the ship.

 

Of course in cases like this it's important to have contingencies for getting to the port of departure on or ahead of schedule.

[BIG_Steve]

NCL will do anything they can to avoid canceling. They don't make money on the fare. They want you onboard spending money.

 

Personally I wouldn't cancel unless (as mentioned above) your insurance covers cancelation for any reason. They will make every effort to get the ship underway and to keep it safe.

 

NCL has a reputation for poor communications though. Good luck getting the straight info from them :confused:

[paul929207]

Unless the hurricane threatens to become a really major storm, like Katrina, any decision to alter the cruise would likely be made at the last minute.

[Bonnie J.]

My cousin missed the ship because the ship left Miami EARLIER than it was supposed to, to get ahead of a storm! They were at the port before scheduled sailing time but ship had left. They had to fly to San Juan and wait a day until the ship got there! Never found out what the cruise line paid for as it was their fault my cousin couldn't get on the ship!

[EdmondDantes]

Hmmm... Good food for thought.

 

We definitely don't want to cancel, but have the NCL insurance that will give 75% credit towards future trip for a no-reason cancellation. That 25% loss is something I am willing to pay in order to avoid DW getting seasick & potentially losing her affinity for cruising.

 

I guess the question is should I cover all possibilities & start looking for a south beach hotel for the weekend?

[Gail & Marty sailing away]

It is the best place to be in a storm thay could move

[DanJ]

Generally, the cruise lines don't want the ships to be in a port during the storm, as the ship and port can be damaged by having a ship tied up in those conditions. There's any number of scenarios they can do, but it really depends on the path of the storm and the timing, which might be too early at this point for them to firm up the plans.

[rvsullivan]

Emily is stationary and not scheduled to arrive off the coast of Florida until Sat morning to afternoon. Friday night late will be windy and rainy near Miami. If that does not change it should not affect this cruise at all.

[Capt_BJ]

2pm eastern update pushes the track farther east.

 

Still too far out to say anything with confidence but it would appear this is going to be a non-issue for US right now unless things change and the driection shifts or the storm increases in strength

 

[EdmondDantes]

Only problem with that map is that with the current itinerary, we are scheduled to be directly crossing its path early saturday morning, which would probably mean rain, wind, and seas too rough for tendering at Great Stirrup Cay, no?

[Capt_BJ]

a couple of technical points about ships and storms:

 

- A ship is better off at sea when a storm approaches then at the dock. A ship can usually get out of the way of a storm given the technology available today. Ship's are seldom surprized by a storm anymore.

 

- A ship sailing thru a storm has the advantage of being able to change course and speed to give the ship the best ride to weather the storm. A ship tied to a pier or at anchor has to just sit there and take what nature throws at it.

 

- If a severe storm is forcast to hit a port, the Captain of the Port (A USCG function) will set increasing 'hurricane conditions'. In the extreme case, ships are ordered out of the port to protect the port structures from damage. A wise ship will depart b4 this order is given. There are of course cases where a ship can not leave (broken down) but this fact is required to have been communicated to COTP well in advance and decisions are then made about possibly towing the ship out, or ensuring that the ship is placed in the best possible location in the port....

 

- cruise ships have stayed out longer, returned to a different port and then loaded at that different port in response to storms. There are contingency plans in place for these situations. DCL for example has shifted operations to Port Everglades when Port Canaveral was unusable. Bus transfers were arranged.

[tracyanns]

We had a very bad storm one time while sailing out of NY...the captain was debating on staying docked but realized 2 things....the ship and dock can substain damage in those type of conditions and the casino cannot open while in port so they cruise line would have been losing out on a lot of money, especially since they closed off all of the outside decks because of the rain and wind...

 

So, we left a little late and we just hugged the coast and didn't really go anywhere, but we had to get out of the dock...

 

The issue with this is what if the ship coming in can't dock...you may be delayed quite a few hours if this happens...

[FUN33]

Safest place for a large ship is in the open ocean - not tied up to a dock during a storm. Chances are 99%+ your ship will sail.

[gerryl12]

The cruise lines are very careful to keep the ships out of harms way, they go around big storms and miss ports, leave early, late etc. With hundreds of millions of dollars invested you take all precautions to keep the ship safe and the customers happy and safe.

[Wekiva Jim]

The weatherman must be a cruiser. Right now Emily is getting beat up by the mountains of Haiti and might not reform in the Florida Straights. While I'm sure the ocean will be stirred up, the waves should be MUCH smaller.

Hope everyone enjoys their cruise this week.:)

[zacc]

Only if someone really p*ssed off the Captain!:D:D

[bbwex]

If a ship is in a port, and the port is going to be hit by a tropical storm, the ship will get out of port and get away from the storm.

 

If the ship is in port, and the storm is out at sea and not going to hit the port, the ship might stay in port until the course was clear and the storm was past.

 

If the ship is at sea and a storm is heading that way, the ship will do everything it can to avoid the storm altogether, though the storm may kick up seas quite a distance out, and the ship might hit heavy seas.

 

No ship will intentionally get into a tropical storm/hurricane. There is a ton of weather information put out, and there are procedures to estimate where the storm will be, add on a wide safety margin, and the ship stays the heck out of the danger area. The weather information gives the ships at sea plenty of advance warning and up-to-date weather information essentially constantly.

 

In the extremely unlikely case that a ship was caught in a tropical storm, the same procedure that is used to show a ship where to go to get out of the path altogether is used to determine the safest quadrant of the storm to be in to minimize the risk of serious damage to the ship.

 

Now that weather information is so pervasive and detailed with a constant feed of satellite images, etc., the chance that a ship would get caught in a storm is becoming more and more remote.

 

With all due deference to our USCG captain, only Coast Guard ships go out into the violent storms that they do, and that's almost always to save people on small boats who do not have access to such detailed weather information, or people who thought they could weather the storm and had no clue. Large ship captains know that Mother Nature is not to be fooled with, and give her a wide berth. Even Navy ships will run from a tropical storm, and trust me that they are built better and stronger than any cruise ships. An old Navy training movie (before there were videos) showed the U.S.S. PITTSBURGH (a cruiser -- smaller than a battleship, larger than a destroyer) which lost 100 feet of its bow and some of the men in that section of the ship in a typhoon (hurricane in the Pacific).

 

All that being said, the ship could depart early (as has been posted previously), or it could depart on time but change its itinerary as appropriate to comply with procedures to avoid tropical storms. If the port is going to be safe, but the storm is going to cross the ship's intended path, it could decide to stay in port until the danger has passed.

[Toto2Kansas]

We have sailed around many storms in the past, but only once did we actually come too close to a hurricane on a cruise ship. Wildest ride I have ever seen on a cruise ship. Let's just say it was the first time I had ever heard an announcement say that staying inside your cabin was the safest place to be. Even the elevators were closed down. This was on Celebrity some years ago............but trust me, I will never forget that wild ride. It was during Hurricane Michelle, whatever year that was.