I'm time-zone challenged

[Jewel99]

Forgive me for what might be a silly question, but how do I find out if there will be any time differences we have to deal with on our sailing in October. I've looked up the current times of the ports online and they seem to coincide with our time zone, but I think that most ports are an hour ahead... but with daylight savings, that seems to change. I've also read that there can be a difference between 'ship time' and 'port time' that you have to be aware of, so I want to try to sort it out in my head.

And that's where my brain refuses to work... :eek:

So does anyone know if we'll be dealing with any time changes in mid-October (October 17-24) that has the following itinerary?

Leaving from Fort Lauderdale and stopping in the following ports:
- Grand Turk
- San Juan
- St Thomas
- Half Moon Cay

Thanks so much!

[jhannah]

Except for HMC, all your ports will be an hour later than FLL.

[Jewel99]

Thanks for the response. I'm not sure why I can be so detailed and so analytical about every aspect of this trip, but the time zone issue just makes my brain turn to goo.

So let me make sure I've got it straight... so if we leave Fort Lauderdale at 5:00 p.m., we have a sea day the next day. I would assume sometime on the second night (or do they do it on the first?), the clocks turn forward one hour... so we lose one hour's sleep, correct? The reason we're concerned about this is we're thinking of doing an excursion at Grand Turk and it has two start times - 9:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. We're trying to decide between the two, and my husband is concerned if our internal clocks think it's 8:00 a.m. due to time change. It's not as much of an issue for us, but with a five-year-old along, the time changes are a bit harder to process quickly. I liked the idea of an earlier start time as we could come back to the ship, change, have a quick lunch and still have time to go ashore if we wanted to, whereas the 11:30 start time probably means that's all we'd do on Grand Turk that day.

I have heard that sometimes the ships don't change their times... so how do we know for sure on this itinerary if the 9:00 a.m. start time means 9:00 local (or 8:00 for our time-challenged brains)?

[Warren1]

What is important is the ships time, that is what you are governed by to be back on board.

Keep your watch set to ships time.

[RuthC]

I have heard that sometimes the ships don't change their times... so how do we know for sure on this itinerary if the 9:00 a.m. start time means 9:00 local (or 8:00 for our time-challenged brains)?
Except for one port on one itinerary, HAL routinely changes the clock as it moves through time zones. The clocks will change on this itinerary.
The time change in each direction will be mentioned from the stage at the end of the show; it will be noted on your Daily Program. And there will be a card announcing it under your pillow chocolate.

[Pete Jackson]

Well, on our May 16 Rotterdam NYC-Rotterdam cruise, we certainly found out that the ship's time *does* religiously confirm to the port time. Here are the time zones we experienced:

Day 1: Move clocks ahead one hour; get ready for Halifax, Nova Scotia on Atlantic daylight time (GMT - 3 hours)

Day 3: Move clocks ahead one hour; get ready for St. Pierre, French island south of Newfoundland (GMT - 2 hours)

Day 4: Move clocks *back* one half hour; get ready for St. Johns, Newfoundland (GMT - 2.5 hours)

Day 5: Move clocks ahead one half hour for sea day (GMT - 2 hours)

Day 6: Move clocks ahead one hour for sea day (GMT - 1 hour)

Day 7: Move clocks ahead one hour for sea day (GMT)

Day 8: Move clocks ahead one hour for sea day, get ready for UK daylight time (GMT + 1 hour)

Day 9 (Belfast UK), Day 10 (Liverpool UK), Day 11 (Waterford, Ireland), Day 12 (Plymouth UK) No clock changes

Day 13: Move clocks ahead one hour for Le Havre, France on European daylight (GMT + 2 hours)

Day 14 Move clocks *back* one hour for Dover, UK (GMT + 1 hour)

Day 15 Move clocks ahead one hour for Rotterdam, Netherlands (GMT +2 hours).

So it would appear that they take whatever steps are necessary to have ship's time be on port time.

[RuthC]

Well, on our May 16 Rotterdam NYC-Rotterdam cruise, we certainly found out that the ship's time *does* religiously confirm to the port time. Here are the time zones we experienced:


So it would appear that they take whatever steps are necessary to have ship's time be on port time.
Doncha just hate eastbound? Just think, had you done this cruise in reverse, you would have had all those extra hours of sleep. :D

You remind me of the first time I did the Voyage of the Vikings. It was round-trip out of NYC, and went as far east as St. Petersburg. Eastbound, that was a loss of eight hour sleep! :eek:

[Sharon in AZ]

Forgive me for what might be a silly question, but how do I find out if there will be any time differences we have to deal with on our sailing in October. I've looked up the current times of the ports online and they seem to coincide with our time zone, but I think that most ports are an hour ahead... but with daylight savings, that seems to change. I've also read that there can be a difference between 'ship time' and 'port time' that you have to be aware of, so I want to try to sort it out in my head.


I like to use the website timeanddate.com for figuring out time zones and world clocks. It also tells you sunrise and sunset times for locations, nice when you are planning a leisurely evening looking at the world go by on the Grand Canal in Venice......