The impact of Hurricane Sandy last week is a not-so-friendly reminder to cruise passengers that, in the end, it's luck of the draw.
When something like this happens, cruise lines have no legal obligation to do anything for passengers whose plans are disrupted. It's there, somewhere, in the fine print of your cruise contract.
The obligation is only a moral one.
The cruise line that appeared to get the worst battering from the public last week was 
Norwegian. Captain Roger Gustavsen — always cool and professional (yes, we have met) — kept his Norwegian Gem at sea to ride out the storm, because the port of New York was closed. He had nowhere to go.
The problem was the Gem's next cruise.
It was supposed to leave October 29 for the Eastern Caribbean and return nine days later, on November 7. On October 29, the Gem was still at sea. Two days later, it was able to get ashore…in Boston. Passengers were able to disembark there, or stay on until the ship returned to New York, which it did on November 2.
The 9-day "Eastern Caribbean" cruise became a 5-day "Bermuda" cruise. Norwegian's "moral" obligation was to give passengers two choices. They could go on the Bermuda cruise and receive a full refund for the four days they passed, or they could skip the whole thing and get a 4-day refund and a 5-day credit.
There's nothing in the fine print that says Norwegian had to do either, but there's everything in the good business code that says Norwegian did it right.
Celebrity Summit
7 nights
December 22, 2012
San Juan (return): St. Croix, St. Kitts, Roseau, St. Georges, St. Thomas
Inside: $899
Cost per day: $128
www.celebritycruises.com