How frequent are missed Ports of Call?

We have been on 4 cruises in the past 7 years and 3 of them have missed at least one port due to weather conditions. Not a big sample we know but our experience prompts the questions how often this happens and how to avoid cruise routes and/or times of year when missed ports are more likely.

We don't question the right of the captain to miss ports on safety grounds but would like before booking a cruise to know for that particular route how often in the past the cruise has missed ports and when. The cruise companies know this but they don't tell us.

E.g in October/November 2014 we took a HAL cruise from Sydney to Auckland via Melbourne, Hobart, Milford Sound, then ports in NZ. The NZ immigration staff boarded in Melbourne and when we asked them why there and not Hobart they replied that the weather that time of year often prevented the passage to Hobart. Sure enough we missed both Hobart and Milford Sound.

A related point is whether the size of the ship affects its ability to dock in bad weather. Thus last week our P&O Oceana could not dock at Citiavecchia but we saw a smaller cruise ship attempting it. Either her captain was reckless or big ships suffer more from wind resistance and lack of manoeuvrability.

We cruise mainly to visit places as opposed to the "cruise experience" and an enforced day of on board activities is no substitute for a missed port. We accept the risk but would like to be able to make an informed choice based on known facts before deciding whether or not to go ahead. Is there any way we can get this information short of trawling through all the posts on particular cruises?

We have aout 600 days on cruises and have only missed about 6 ports. Most due to weather/sea conditions. One due to pirate activity in the area around the port.

Just three missed ports in over twenty cruises - disappointing, sure; but if absolute certainty is needed it is best to stay ashore.

12college, I am not sure how you would be able to find out that information for the entire world of cruising. There are areas of the world where it is more likely that you miss a port due to weather. In my experience and reading on cc, they are some of the following:

Falkland Islands, the southern tip of South America (Ushuaia, Punta Arenas, Cape Horn), Easter Island

Several ports in New Zealand and Milford Sound due to its difficult entry, Bunbury (?) in Australia due to the port's shallowness

Smaller ships and expedition ships are more likely to tender passengers ashore because there are less passengers to take care of and they might be younger and more athletic.

Let me give you two examples: On a Caribbean cruise, we missed the island of Nevis due to high surf. Perfect weather! The captain explained that the usual docking place for tenders was inaccessible due to wave action and he couldn't let his 1 200 passengers go ashore to an area where there was no phone, no taxis etc.

The French luxury expedition ship L'Austral offers a cruise in the South Pacific that ends on Easter Island. They will definitely debark their passengers. At the same time, large cruise ships seem to skip the island quite often.

The freighter/passenger ship Aranui in French Polynesia never skipped a port and the landings with their whale boats were sometimes rough. On the other hand, I have been with a screaming passenger on a Veendam lifeboat tender in slightly choppy waters where the local Indians went out in their homemade narrow canoes.

Conclusion: Fly to the place or travel on an expedition ship. :)

I don't know how often it really is. Some ports are more likely to be missed than others.

We have 78 days at sea, and we have yet to miss a port. Grand Cayman came close on one occasion due to wind/high waves in Georgetown, but our ship was able to go to a back-up location (probably only room for one ship there) instead, allowing us to still go to Grand Cayman.

We usually sail the Caribbean in January/February.

Other than intense research for the area you want to cruise to, there really is no way to know what the weather will be at any specific time. Or if your ship will have mechanical issues.

We cruised the Pacific Northwest in September and the port of Astoria was cancelled due to storms and high winds. We did dock in Victoria, but they soon closed the port when winds knocked roofs off buildings hitting some passengers. Upon returning home, we found out that the entry into Astoria is often unpassable.

On our Med cruise, weather was absolutely beautiful the end of October, until we approached Mykonos. The Captain tried 5 times and finally aborted, we sailed slowly on to Athens.

A number of years ago, I believe it was the Celebrity Summit that was having pod issues. They continued to sail, but at half speed missing a lot of ports. That was reported on this website numerous times.

Again, it has been a few years ago, there was another cruise that was supposed to be going to the Caribbean. When folks got to the port they were advised the ship was going to New England due to a hurricane in the Caribbean. The folks could go or cancel, but no money refunded if they cancelled. The folks sued, but I never did hear if they won or not.

You could try reviews on this website and sister website Tripadvisor to check out time of year and experiences for any specific area you are interested in cruising to. But there really are no guarantees, as a matter of fact, if you read the contract, "...the cruiseline has the right to change itinerary for weather, mechanical, or any reason whatsoever". If you don't like the conditions, maybe cruising isn't the best vacation for you.

Regarding larger versus smaller ships, it's important to remember that oftentimes passages into a port may be narrow, shallow in places, and tricky to navigate a large vessel through -- especially if it is windy or if the seas are rough. Smaller ships may have more room to maneuver.

If ports are important, the best thing to do is to research carefully once you find a cruise that you're interested in before actually booking it.

One example: Docking or tendering at Mykonos (a Greek island) is adversely affected by what are called the Meltemi winds that occur mainly in July and August.

Edited to add: As anyone who has ever sailed can tell you, though, there are never any guarantees. I went many years cruising without missing a single port. Then in the last couple of years I've missed several.

On exactly half of all our cruises we have either missed a port or had port order changed.

Not a lot you can do about it.

Once cruise just after the end cyclone season a late cyclone, another cruise at a time when weather should have not been an issue cyclonic winds.

Port strikes, terrorist (not sure that's the right term but it says what I am trying to convey) activity, a dash to a major port for a medivac, a problem with the ship, a detour to rescue some people of a yacht, they can all cause a missed port.

I've been cruising for 40 years. I never missed a port until my 31st cruise -- a TA from Europe to NYC in Sept. 2013 (Emerald Princess). We had high winds/seas in the North Atlantic & missed 3 ports: Belfast, Iceland & Greenland. [Greenland was/is a tender port & had been missed the prior year.]

This March, on a RT from San Francisco to Hawaii, we missed Kauai -- very high winds. The Star Princess (2600 pax) couldn't turn into the small port area because of 35-40mph cross winds.

Yes, ship size can make a difference.

A Carnival ship (Miracle?) missed the Los Angeles port yesterday due to high surf - almost unheard of! They docked instead in San Diego and people had to be bussed back and forth. So...it can happen almost anywhere. In general, I'd guess that tender ports are missed more often than dock/pier ports.

12 cruises, never missed a port. There have been a few ports I wished we missed lol

In approx 27 cruises, I missed one port (Martha's Vineyard) and had the time cut so drastically short in Port Canaveral/Orlando that all of the tours to the Disney theme parks and Sea World were canceled.

We missed either 2 or 3 ports (can't remember which) on our first cruise, a rough few days coming out of Sydney.

We missed Lima a few weeks ago.

Honestly it isn't something that I am ever concerned about. If we miss a port it is due to weather, high seas, a problem at the port, who knows. It's not really anything we can predict, so I don't worry about it.

Pirates?? Now that would be a little scarey! :eek:

On 10 cruises in different areas we never missed a port.

Twice we had some smaller delays (tender ports).

We've had around 30 cruises to the Caribbean, the Med, Mexican Riviera, Hawaii, Panama Canal, Transatlantics and South America and have never missed a port--lucky I guess.

I'm sure we will sometime.

It depends on the itineraries you pick. We've missed quite a few ports and have had visits shortened, too. We had one port visit shortened because when it was time to leave the night before, the anchor got stuck. You just never know.

We've tried to visit Greenland three times and haven't made it yet.

When it comes to missing ports it happens! At one point DW and I cruised for over 150 days (on 6 Continents) without ever missing a port. We then had a streak of bad luck where we missed multiple ports on several cruises. Missing a port is more likely on exotic itineraries that go to ports that are either tender ports or lack a lot of infrastructure found in the huge commercial ports. As an example, if you are going to Porto or perhaps up the river to Bordeaux the chances of a missed port are greater then if you cruising into Civitavecchia and Naples.

It is just something for which you cannot plan. A few years ago we took a pretty common Canada/New England itinerary at the best time of the year. While we were in Quebec City a huge storm started moving up the Atlantic Coast and our ship was forced to stay in the river for several days. As a result we missed 3 ports,...but also discovered a relatively new port (Le Baie) which turned out to be a wonderful day. It is all part of the travel game. In fact, it is not just cruises that have issues. One can do a long driving trip in Europe and have several weeks of awful weather. Or you could plan a trip to Disney World and have stormy weather for your entire visit.

Hank

I'm perfectly aware of being replyimg to an old post but I think it's a very interesting one. We cruised with several european companies such as MSC, Costa, pullmantur, celestyal.. several times and never have missed a port till this Christmas (Punta Arena on Norwegian Star) We choose our cruises primayly for itineraries, so two adverised ncl cruises are in our bucket list: Norwgian Spirit to Asia ( Philipines, Malasya, Borneo & Singapore) and Norwegian Sun ( Australia and New Zealand)  We actuallly booked this cruise last Christmas with Norwegian but we just cancelled it wen, before final payment they changed the port callls in Tasmania (Burnie) and Eden replacing them for an extra sea day and an overnight in the outskirts of Sydney to be added to our previous nights at town in a central hotel. According to some ppl. Who did it, it also missed another port: Wellington. So we are relictant to book again with ncl. Does someone know how are the chances of missing ports in these itineraries? I know that it fepends on lots of things, for instance we had 50%/50% at Stanley and we didn't miss it. But I.m starting to think that several ports like Boracay (Philipines) are likely to be missed. Any new comments would be apreciated. 

If you go over to the NCL board here, you will see continuing complaints of canceled ports, and continuing to sell cruises listing the cancelled ports.  EM

On 5/3/2015 at 12:45 PM, 12college said:

 

A related point is whether the size of the ship affects its ability to dock in bad weather. Thus last week our P&O Oceana could not dock at Citiavecchia but we saw a smaller cruise ship attempting it. Either her captain was reckless or big ships suffer more from wind resistance and lack of manoeuvrability.

 

Yes, winds affect large ships far more than small ships. Like a big sail instead of a small sail. 

It was a factor in the Evergreen container ship blocking the Suez Canal a  little while back. 

Our captain on Azura aborted two attempts to enter St John's, Antigua because of high and variable winds, not a problem for a much smaller ship that day.

Bigger ships also have a deeper draught, so wind or currents or other factors which take a ship off a narrow channel can mean touching bottom.

JB 🙂

In close to 50 cruises we have missed 3 ports.  I can't say for sure how many ports in total we have visited, but 3 will be a pretty low percent (maybe 1%??).  All were weather related.  Two in the Med and one in the Caribbean.  

We missed Livorno because of a gale.  For Portofino it was too rough for tender operations.   For the Caribbean, I don't remember the missed port.  Whatever it was we went to Cozumel instead to avoid a storm.  

I’ve been lucky. Only one missed port ever, and that was due to emergency repairs at the dock, not ship or weather issues. 
 

For pretty much any flight in the world, I can look up stats on how often the flight is delayed or cancelled. It’s a shame we don’t have that for ships and ports. Only antidotal reports. 

13 hours ago, Essiesmom said:

If you go over to the NCL board here, you will see continuing complaints of canceled ports, and continuing to sell cruises listing the cancelled ports.  EM

We had never missed a port (unless you count getting to Fort Lauderdale 2 days late because of a hurricane or an entire cruise cancelled due to Covid). Then we went on the NCL Prima last summer, London (Southampton) to Reykjavik, and missed 2 ports. The ports were Zebrugges for Brugge for according to them an extremely low tide and Isafjordur, Iceland that they missed on every single one of their cruises because the dock was not finished and they said the ship's lifeboats were not certified to be used as tenders.

13 hours ago, wcook said:

I’ve been lucky. Only one missed port ever, and that was due to emergency repairs at the dock, not ship or weather issues. 
 

For pretty much any flight in the world, I can look up stats on how often the flight is delayed or cancelled. It’s a shame we don’t have that for ships and ports. Only antidotal reports. 

Good point.  Something I might find interesting, but not something I personally would likely use when booking a cruise.  

As with nearly everything on the internet, it's overblown.

Try telling a crew member how sad you are because you had your day planned, and no you need to replan it. They will get very sad as they work their 60 hour week for pennies on the dollar.