Carnival Spirit guests booked for a grand Pacific-to-Gulf odyssey are getting an unplanned lesson in flexible cruising. Facing Hurricane Trudy off the West Coast, the ship has cancelled its Puntarenas, Costa Rica call, leaving just one scheduled stop — Cartagena de Indias, Colombia — on what was meant to be a multi-country repositioning voyage to Mobile, Alabama.
The problems started early. The ship's departure from Seattle slipped by a day, which forced Carnival to drop the planned visit to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. That left Puntarenas as the first port of the itinerary. But with the captain steering a wider route to avoid the worst of Trudy, opposing currents slowed the ship down, pushing its arrival outside Costa Rica's required port entry window.
"We made every effort to reach Puntarenas, but after sailing a wider route to avoid the most severe weather from Hurricane Trudy, strong opposite currents reduced our speed," Captain Lorenzo Calogero explained in a statement to guests. He confirmed the day will instead be spent at sea as the ship heads toward Panama.
It's not all downtime. The Spirit is still due to transit the Panama Canal on Monday, October 19, 2026 — always the standout moment on this routing — before calling at Cartagena's walled old city on Tuesday, October 20. From there the ship spends four days crossing the Caribbean before finishing the voyage in Mobile, its new homeport.
Guests who booked shore excursions in Puntarenas through the cruise line don't need to do anything: those bookings were automatically cancelled and the cost refunded to onboard accounts. Carnival has not announced replacement programming for the lost sea day, but repositioning cruises typically lean on extra onboard activities, and the line's captain thanked passengers for their patience while stressing that safety comes first.
The story is a useful reminder of how repositioning cruises work. These longer one-off voyages move ships between seasonal homeports — here from Alaska-season Seattle to the Gulf of Mexico — and they pack in long sea days, canal transits and a handful of ports rather than a port-a-day schedule. That makes them great value per night and a relaxing way to cross continents, but it also means weather and timing can eat into the itinerary with little room to recover. A one-day departure delay and a hurricane's edge were enough to wipe out two of three port calls on this sailing.
For anyone eyeing a similar voyage, it's worth noting the positives: Carnival communicated the change clearly, refunded excursions automatically, and the Panama Canal transit and Cartagena stop remain intact — hardly a wasted trip. Travellers booking repositioning sailings should treat the itinerary as a broad outline, build in travel insurance, and expect the unexpected on the high seas, especially during Pacific hurricane season.
