Ship time vs port time

[dsidell]

Does ship time ever vary from port time while in the Caribbean?

[chrysalis]

On all of our cruises in the Caribbean, the ship's time was the same as port time.

[spongerob]

Yes, it can vary, so you have to be careful not to rely upon local time. Usually this happens when the US is on DST. Most Caribbean countries don't make that change. Your ship will remain on US time, so there could be an hour's difference between the ship's time and local time.

[BigGuy25]

When we were in Belize a few years ago, the ship's time was an hour off of the port time. It caused a bit of confusion with the guides who were leading our cave tubing expedition. Fortunately, it was discovered early enough not to cause a problem getting back to the ship.

[3GR8Sons]

On Ruby they left a notice for us to change our clocks when necessary.

[cruiserbryce]

I think it depends on the captain and the route you are sailing...most of the time our times have changed though

[caribill]

Most of the time, the ship's time will be changed to agree with local port time.

 

There will be a notice on the front page of the Patter and usually a card from the cabin steward.

 

(Be careful of one thing. Next day's Patter comes out the evening before. So for example, the Patter for Wednesday will be at your cabin Tuesday evening. If that Patter says time will change "tonight", it means Wednesday night, not the night you received the Patter. I have seen many confused passengers in the morning who changed their time a day early.)

 

In some cases, ship's time will not change, but this information will be well publicized in the Patter and possibly at the entertainment introductions by the CD. A couple of times I have seen this done:

a) When local time is 30 minutes off, not an hour.

b) When it would mean changing back the next night and Princess thinks it would be less confusing to not change than two change in two days.

Of course, I have also seen ship's time change under these two conditions.

[jmu04]

Yes, it can vary, so you have to be careful not to rely upon local time. Usually this happens when the US is on DST. Most Caribbean countries don't make that change. Your ship will remain on US time, so there could be an hour's difference between the ship's time and local time.

 

We just came off of a Caribbean cruise and, yes, the ship time and the port time did vary. It is important to know the ship time and what time you need to be on the ship when going on your excursions. We were in St. Thomas and tired of shopping, so decided to take a local tour of the island. This was supposed to be only a two hour tour and we were told we would be taken directly back to our ship. This worked with our schedule because, in theory, it would get us back an hour before our ship sailed. As the tour began to run long we communicated with our driver the time our ship sailed and his reply was always not to worry - he was the biggest tour company on the island and he had the time of all of the ship sailings and we would not miss our ship. We finally convinced him that we needed to get back to our ship, but he kept telling us that we still had an hour before sailing. In the end, we were back right at the time we needed to board. We were not the last ones on the ship, but pretty close. We did not have the extra hour that our guide kept telling us we had. While the tour was good, it made out last 45 minutes pretty stressful as we were planning in our minds how we were going to get from St. Thomas to Dominica on our own!

 

The time you need to board the ship is always listed in the Patter, but not in the additional pull-out information they give you about the islands.

 

Enjoy your cruise.

[venusbello1]

We were notified of a time change via a small card in our cabin as well as in the Patter; the ship was always on local time.

 

Happy sailing!

VB1

[DanJ]

We noticed in 2001 on the only 2 Carnival cruises we every took that they left the ship on homeport time on both cruises (one to Panama Canal, the other to Canada/Nerw England). Not sure if they still do that. Our Princess cruises in the eastern Caribbean in winter always went ahead an hour to what local time was on St Thomas, St Maarten etc.

[cruzzers]

So far on all our Caribbean cruises, the ship notified us to change our time to match island time. Be sure and check if you are not sure. It would be a horrible mistake to make and miss your ship.

[dsidell]

If time of year makes a difference I will be going southern caribbean in Feb.

[spongerob]

Make sure you have your watch set to ship's time, and refer to that rather than relying on local time. Know when you need to be back on board. If you do that, you'll never go wrong.