Windjammer Barefoot Cruises

My wife and I have been saving for the last couple of years to take a Caribbean cruise. I’ve never had any desire to cruise on one of those huge floating hotels so I found a romantic cruise on a 196’ sailing yacht out of Grenada with Windjammer Barefoot Cruises. We paid for our cruise in full in June for a cruise leaving right after Thanksgiving. We search and found some low cost air fare tickets from Tampa, FL to St. George’s, Grenada. The bad thing is the tickets were non-refundable. We bought trip insurance just in case. We also bought trip insurance for the cruise. Last week we received an email from Windjammer Barefoot Cruises stating that our cruise had been canceled in Grenada and that they could rearrange our cruise leaving from Costa Rica. We didn’t want to buy more tickets to fly to Costa Rica so we asked for a refund. Come to find out Windjammer Barefoot Cruises has been in finical difficulties for the last several years and none of their ships has even sailed in the last couple of months leaving passengers and crews high and dry in the ports where their ships were. Groups were taking up donations to fly the crews left with no pay home. When we asked for a refund they told us in so many words if we didn’t rearrange to cruise out of Costa Rica it would be next April at the earliest before we will see a refund. Well they are still taking people’s money telling everyone that their next cruise is set for Nov 3rd from Costa Rica but through hearsay they still don’t have clearances to leave port. We are still going to fly to Grenada in November but we have found and made other arrangements while there. I don’t think we will ever see a refund from Windjammer Barefoot Cruises. As for the cruise trip insurance it does not cover you if the cruise line goes out of business.