Hello Teresa,
Thank you for booking a cruise with us. We are sorry that you were unable to attend the cruise at the scheduled departure time. We certainly understand that many factors can come into play in these situations, and that is why we strongly encourage all of our guests to arrive well before boarding time. While we do not know the exact details of your situation, we want you to know that once we have initiated departure for the vessel, it can be quite a process to reverse the procedure to allow additional safe boarding. Crew have to switch back from departure to boarding stations and interrupt service or lookout duties, line tensions must be re-adjusted from pre-departure positions to boarding positions, and so on. Radio calls may have been arranged with other vessels who are negotiating agreements to get underway, dock, or pass by. The whole procedure might delay our departure by an additional 10 minutes or more if there are no complications, which is not fair to everyone who is aboard at the scheduled departure time and expecting to experience a full cruise. It is a difficult decision to make, but we hope these details will shed some light on the reasons that we must stick with our schedule. We do hope you will have another opportunity to join us! Feel free to contact us at publicsails@boston-sailing.com, and we can help you with your reservation.
Warmly,
Classic Harbor Line Boston