All-Aboard

[ridethetide]

Does anyone know when is the latest you can board the ship before it leaves a port?  If I return from an excursion at 7:30 pm and the ship is scheduled to leave at 8:00, is that sufficient?

[ducklite]

1 hour ago, ridethetide said:

Does anyone know when is the latest you can board the ship before it leaves a port?  If I return from an excursion at 7:30 pm and the ship is scheduled to leave at 8:00, is that sufficient?

We usually try to be back on 30-45 minutes before we leave port, but in Santorini we were told that if we wanted to go check out the shops at the port area and take the last tender that it was fine.  We were cautioned not to miss the last tender though.  We did take the last tender (they were packing up the water stand, the umbrella, etc. and it went on the tender with us) and within five minutes of being back on board, we were sailing.

Your plan should be fine with Windstar.  

[milepig]

There will be a sign when you depart ship. If docked it will say an all on board time. If tendered there will be a sign - I think both on the ship and at where you get the tender saying “last tender at H:MM”

 

I would also expect reception to know when you board. 

 

[ridethetide]

59 minutes ago, milepig said:

There will be a sign when you depart ship. If docked it will say an all on board time. If tendered there will be a sign - I think both on the ship and at where you get the tender saying “last tender at H:MM”

 

I would also expect reception to know when you board. 

 

I need to know now in order to confirm a whale watching excursion.  It will be too late by the time we embark.  

[Cometman]

We always try to be the last people on board... it's a little contest we have, always ask how many people are left. The later you can stay in some of these little ports, the more you witness what life is really like there without the crowds.

[CruiseOrLand]

I'm sure Cometman is right, but that is just over the "good" side of the line from the tedious buffoons who delay each "On the bus at 2:20" command by 2 to 5 minutes. Naturally, people book private excursions (for among other good reasons) so they don't have to deal with late-ish fellow guests. I am afraid that, because of cell phones, lateness is becoming simply a personal choice.

 

We have also been on the last tender for a Windstar departure, but that is very clearly within the letter of the law. And we made sure to eat in a restaurant within walking distance of the tender. (But you can imagine how hard it is to get even a Michelin-star restaurant to "please bring me the check before we finish" in Europe!)

 

Because it turned out that the port-authority bus in Civitavecchia was going to serve three different boats, and because they would not leave (or turn on the air conditioning) until it was over half-full, we came very close to missing the Embarcation of one of our Windstar cruises. I'm not pleading for indulgence, we should have allowed more time. And it was our first time using the train to Civitavecchia. But they pulled up the gangplank as soon as we entered the ship.

[sb44]

On 6/23/2019 at 1:02 PM, ridethetide said:

I need to know now in order to confirm a whale watching excursion.  It will be too late by the time we embark.  

The published times on itineraries are always subject to change. Sometimes the port requires changes, sometimes tides or weather conditions.  If you are doing a private tour I would make sure you have some cancellation options or that it won't break the bank if there is a change of plans.  We do mostly private excursions but know that there's a possibility that our plans may not work out for lots of reasons.

[milepig]

16 minutes ago, sb44 said:

The published times on itineraries are always subject to change. Sometimes the port requires changes, sometimes tides or weather conditions.  If you are doing a private tour I would make sure you have some cancellation options or that it won't break the bank if there is a change of plans.  We do mostly private excursions but know that there's a possibility that our plans may not work out for lots of reasons.

 

This - and embarkation times can also change depending on the needs of the port, which can change without much notice.

 

All of this is the main reason to do the WS excursions since WS will make sure you're all back before departing. When booking our own I stay away from joining other group tours and instead look for a personal tour with an operator and tour that are flexible, allowing us to change things as late as when we get in the car - saying "the all on board is 30 minutes earlier than we thought" and the operator is able to just adjust a little. A whale watch tour is pretty set.

Edited June 25, 2019 by milepig

[CruiseOrLand]

It's a very extreme example, but we took the Windstar ship tour from Puerto Cortes, Honduras to the ancient city of Copan. Departure was 6:15AM, so you can imagine how far it was to the site. The tour (with hot lunch) was great, and worth the high expense and time. But we had a lot of problems getting back to the ship. We were over two hours late, and the ship had been forced to move to another marina (20 minutes away) because their time at the original place was up. Of course, Wind Surf had to wait for us, and they even had some kind of food for us when we boarded.

 

Just last January, we went on a Windstar ship excursion in Panama City. But because there was an embarrassing "fish kill" at the marina involved, the Panamanian military closed half the marina for clean up. In this case, I fault the official tour organizer for failing to find out exactly where the new tender pickup point was, and for failing to escort us to that pickup point! (It turned out to be BEHIND the kind of buzzer-lock gangway gate you find at even modest private marinas in the U.S.) We walked the land-width of the marina three times before happening on the right information. Luckily, there were still two hours before the ship's departure, so we weren't frantic.

 

It was Viking River, not Windstar, but in Moscow, we asked the Cruise Director (a second-generation Russian-American, with superb Russian language skills) to arrange an (unlisted!) White Nights Opera trip to the Maryinsky Theater for us. When (his selected ... ) cab driver took us back to the ship after the opera (Queen of Spades), he pulled over because he said the ship had moved. He pulled out his cellphone to learn that it was on the other side of the river, at a different dock! We had no cell phones back then, but the cab driver took care of everything, no extra charge. It was worth the peace of mind to have booked an (expensive) but 100% legit "custom" excursion.

 

So before you book independently, evaluate your local travel skills, and ask yourself Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" question!