Dubrovnik Cancelled

[Welshdoc]

Dear All,

Just back from a fantastic week around the eastern Med on C.Fascinosa.

This isn't really a moan, but I just wanted to see what other more experienced cruisers think.

Last Friday, our day at sea, there was a medical emergency that required a sick child to be disembarked, a helicopter retrieval was attempted but failed. We then found out that we had manoeuvred closer to mainland Greece to enable a tender boat to take the child to the mainland.

Now as a doctor myself I have no issues with this at all and I hope the child is doing well.

The issue I have is that this resulted in our last port call, Dubrovnik, being completely cancelled resulting in 2 sea days in a row. We even came back to Venice 90 minutes earlier than expected.

It was only scheduled to be a 5.5h stop.

For this each cabin was given a full refund of any booked excursions and a 75 euro credit.

Does this seem fair compensation?

Can't the ship "catch up" on a few hours delay?

Can't the ship have arrived a little late in Venice to enable our final stop to take place?

We were really looking forward to seeing Dubrovnik, hence my little venting here!

Your thoughts please?

[Capricruiser]

Medical emergencies such as yours are fairly common but it's rare that they cause sufficient delay to warrant the cancellation of a port call. It happened on one of my cruises several years ago but I just chalked it up to bad luck. I immagine there's something written in the terms of contract that allow the cruise line to change the itinerary for reasons such as this.

[AnonymousCruiser69]

sorry you had to miss dubrovnik.

 

i did some googling, trying to find out how far it is from greece to dubrovnik. i found this: http://ports.com/sea-route/port-of-katakolon,greece/port-of-dubrovnik,croatia/

 

it says 404 nautical miles. that's roughly 20 hours at top speed. you didn't say how long your delay was transferring the sick child.

 

to answer your question, yes, they probably could've made up the time. the port slot in dubrovnik would have had to be open AND they would've had to burn excessive fuel to make up the lost time.

 

on the bright side, dubrovnik has been there for a long time and it will probably be there for a long time in the future. and capricruiser is correct - there is a clause in the contract that says they can change the itinerary for any reason (and give you nothing).

Edited November 5, 2013 by AnonymousCruiser69

[Welshdoc]

Thanks for both your replies. Difficult to put a time on how long the delay took as we didn't know there was anything going on until we stopped for a helicopter, that process took under an hour but who knows how much of a delay having to go closer to land took by going off course. Now done two cruises and had a cancelled port in both! First was Bahrain the day following all the trouble kicked off there so I can fully live with that!!

[MasterNotCommander]

Consider that shore excursions are one of the primary revenue sources on cruises, missing a port is a major issue for a Captain and is something he/she will avoid at all costs.

Other factors such as limitations on the ships speed can prevent the ship making up the time.