Ship time vs. Port time

[GoinToTheWell]

I remember reading somewhere (I cannot find it) that there are two ports that run on different time then ship time....I think one is Corfu but I cannot remember the other. Do they run an hour before or after ship time? I want to make sure I have timed all my independent excursions properly. Thanks

[jeanlyon]

Hi, I have no idea what you mean. The ship's time will be the same as the port time. I have never known it to be different.

[GoinToTheWell]

I read this one someones post about Corfu - that ship time was different than land time by an hour...not sure how else to explain it. We have experienced it in a couple of ports over the years - Grand Cayman comes to mind.

[tcocktail]

This everything port time vs ship happened to us in Cozemeul. Make sure that you are on ship time so not to miss the ship! I have no idea why they do this.

[X-ring]

This everything port time vs ship happened to us in Cozemeul.... I have no idea why they do this.

 

I am guessing that Cozumel was the only stop on your cruise that was in the Central time zone.

[tcocktail]

I am guessing that Cozumel was the only stop on your cruise that was in the Central time zone.

 

 

You are correct about that, but why were we the only ship in port doing that?

[Kindlychap]

I am guessing that Cozumel was the only stop on your cruise that was in the Central time zone.

 

Then change the time on the ship. Surely?

 

Otherwise you are asking for trouble.

 

Matthew

[hajekfam]

The best thing to do is to check your watch time to the ship's time each morning no matter if the time changes or not. That way you won't have any mistakes with the time. If you are asking because of private tour times - the tour operators know what time the ships are there and leave.

[tom_uk]

On our Mediterranean cruises on Galaxy, the ship was on local time all the time, including switching from GMT + 1 (Italy, where we boarded) to GMT + 2 (Greece - Athens, Mykonos, Santorini, etc). I can't remember precisely when we were advised to change out watches - our arrival into Greek waters was both preceded and followed by a day at sea - but there was a lot of advice & warning about. The effect was that on port days ship time was always the same as port time.

 

I have known one exception to this. We did a mini-cruise on Fred Olsen's Braemar that was supposed to finish with a visit to Guernsey but instead diverted to Cherbourg. Guernsey is on GMT, Cherbourg (like the rest of France) is on GMT + 1, and on that occasion we were advised that because the port diversion had happened at the last minute, ship time would remain GMT, all passengers were advised to do likewise, and departure time from Cherbourg was expressed in two times: ship time & local time. Rather complicatedly, we had been on French time the day before as we had been in Honfleur, and we had been advised at the end of that day that ship time would switch to GMT overnight, before arrival at Guernsey. So we had reset all our watches last thing before going to bed, and then awoke to find we were in Cherbourg and not Guernsey.

 

Presumably, also, ship time affects things like staff hours of duty, so I suspect that it might have been the reason why ship time stayed on GMT that day: the decision to divert from Guernsey to Cherbourg wasn't made until 4:30 or 5am, which (if they'd changed back to French time) would suddenly have become 5:30 or 6am, and the waiting/galley staff would have found themselves an hour behind schedule.