Irene has cruise ships on the run

The glorious weather I enjoyed in Andalsnes on Friday couldn’t last. Rain was obscuring the windows of Adonia’s Sorrento restaurant before I had finished dinner last night, and we woke to a a grey, cloudy and inevitably wet Bergen this morning.
But our discomfort was nothing to that which cruise passengers in the Caribbean have faced this week as their holiday itineraries have been disrupted by Hurricane Irene.
The facilities at the cruise port of Grand Turk, and the private island of Half Moon Cay haver both suffered substantial damage, and ships from Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and Holland America all had to miss ports, or change the order in which they were visited, to avoid the worst of the weather.
Hundreds of passengers were left behind in San Juan, Puerto Rico, when authorities decided to close the port and ships had to get out quick.
Attention is now turning away from the Caribbean to US mainland ports and ships were hoping to outrun Irene to reach the safety of Charleston and Baltimore. They are battening down the hatches in New York, where Holland America’s Veendam arrived a day early today and is not expected to leave until Monday. Disembarking passengers could choose to stay on board on Saturday night, and those who were able to arrive for Sunday’s departure despite cancelled flights and closed airports, were told they would be spending the night in port.
Celebrity Summit and Norwegian Gem, both sailing from New York to Bermuda, will leave on Monday instead of Sunday.
Carnival Glory was expected to leave New York early for its cruise to Canada, and Holland America’s Maasdam should leave Boston on time but will probably have to abandon calls at Bar Harbor, Maine, and Halifax, Nova Scotia because of high winds and rough seas.