After Hurricanes Irma and Maria: What Caribbean cruisers should know now
Two major hurricanes have caused an unimaginable amount of suffering, death and destruction in the Caribbean in recent weeks.
Should, can, or may one even call at the affected islands in the upcoming cruise season? Most of the major shipping companies seem to have found a common answer to this question: Extremely devastated destinations such as Saint Maarten, Tortola, St. Kitts, Antigua, Dominica or Key West will be removed from the itineraries of the megaliners and replaced by ports in other Antilles islands or the British and American Virgin Islands. In addition, some shipping companies are also actively involved in providing aid on the ground: Royal Caribbean, for example, sent a ship to Puerto Rico to evacuate more than 3,000 Huricane victims, while Carnival Cruises has been regularly setting sail with relief supplies on board in recent weeks. The small shipping company Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line is going one step further by anchoring its MV Grand Celebration in St. Thomas until mid-December, where it will serve as accommodation for the National Guard relief teams.
Impressive measures, which nevertheless raise the question for us travelers as to whether it is morally justifiable to cruise through the Caribbean at this time. Here is a quote from an email that Daniel Schäfer, Managing Director of Sea Cloud Cruises, sent to his customers a few days ago: "For the moment, we have made a conscious decision to keep the timetables as they are advertised in the catalog. A hasty rerouting would deprive the people on the affected islands of their urgently needed livelihoods; we want to avoid this." We think this is a clever approach, which will hopefully also contribute a little to ensuring that the affected dream islands will soon be calm again after the storm.
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