It is highly unlikely that your cruise will be cancelled due to a hurricane. This assumes the hurricane is not impacting your embarkation port-of-call. In simpler terms, this assumes the hurricane is not present at the port where you board the ship and your cruise begins. Cruise ships are equipped with highly sophisticated navigation systems. If a hurricane occurs during your cruise, the Captain is able to identify these storms and navigate away from them into safer waterways. For lack of a better word, cruise ships can outrun a hurricane. This allows your ship to set sail as originally planned.

Unfortunately the presence of a hurricane may require your cruise to deviate from its original itinerary. This may include visiting your ports-of-call in an order not originally planned, visiting alternate ports-of-call, or skipping some or all of your original ports-of-call entirely. Although this may be disappointing, it is important to remember the safety of the passengers and crew onboard the ship is the Captain’s top priority. If you are visiting a port-of-call which requires disembarkation via tender, the waters may be too rough to safely transport passengers from the cruise ship to the port. On one of my (hurricane season) cruises the Captain had to make the tough decision to skip a cruise-line owned port-of-call. I was disappointed but the ship continued to Nassau, Bahamas which was our second port-of-call. The ship then docked overnight and we were able to spend two full days in the Bahamas as a result.