best travel insurance for ferry cancellations

schmince20

Hi can anyone suggest a good travel insurance for a single trip to a greek island. We are travelling in two weeks and have heard from a few travel forum sites that bad winds that cause bad sea crossings and then ferries can be cancelled. I have given us a day buffer to catch our flight from athens back to the UK, but there is a chance that our ferry could be cancelled and we would miss our flight back to the uk.

Thanks

davidlizard

We do this sort of holiday every year and have a similar issue. What island(s) are you visiting?

The thing that generally affects ferries when its windy is that the port is closed, so ferries cannot depart or dock. It is rare for the port to be closed for more than half a day, so the boat will usually sail albeit very late. Therefore giving yourself an extra day in Athens at the end of your holiday would be ample.

An alternative to Athens is one of the nearby Saronic islands - Aegina or Agistri (good small beach island) - both have plenty of boats daily to Athens and no more than 1 hour sailing time.

Some ferries are more susceptable to winds than others. The FlyingCats and Sea Jets are small catermeran types which do not put to see when it gets rough, so its wise not to rely on these. However the regular ferries such as the Blue Stars and the Highspeeds are reliable if the port is not shut.

The chance of the wind affecting your ferry (assuming its not a small cat) is pretty rare - we have had one affected trip in about 20 years/100 sailings, and then the boat was 6 hours late. If you are going from an island with several boats to Pireaus/Rafina (Paros, Naxos, Mykonos etc etc) then you are reducing the risk even more.

Have a good holiday. Sorry I have not answered your insurance question. The one we used which I cannot find had cover for "delay of public transport" which appeared to address this issue.