Your sailing is cancelled and a queue is forming at the ticket desk. Do not join it yet. A ferry cancelled in Greece is stopped by the port authority, not by the ferry company, and nobody at that desk can reverse it.
- Confirm it at the source. The operator’s app or site, and the port authority.
- Do not queue. Open your booking. EU rules give you a choice: your fare back, or re-routing at no extra cost.
- Screenshot everything. The cancellation notice, the ticket, the time.
- Look for another boat. A ban does not always cover every port, route or hull.
- Flying home within 48 hours? Solve the flight first, the island second.
When the cause is severe weather, the operator owes you a refund or another boat, but not a hotel and not compensation. That is the rule, not a customer-service failure. Rights on this page last checked July 2026.
A Greek ferry is stopped by the port authority, not by the ferry company
When the wind gets up, the local port authority and the coast guard suspend departures from the affected ports. Greeks call it the apagorevtiko, the sailing ban. It is an administrative decision about the state of the sea, applied to a port, and the ferry company cancels the sailings that cannot run under it. The company is complying, not choosing.
Three things follow, and each changes what you do next.
Arguing at the desk cannot work. The agent in front of you did not make this decision and cannot reverse it. What that agent can do is move you or refund you, which is a different and much shorter conversation.
A ban can be lifted the same day. It is reviewed as the weather is, so the status at breakfast is not the status at noon. Check the source again before you write off the day.
A ban is not always total. It is issued per port and per sea area, so a ban that closes the exposed crossings can leave sheltered routes running, and the heavy conventional ships often sail when the light high-speed craft cannot. The boat still leaving may not be yours, but it may still be one you can take. Our guide to the ferry network explains how the wind decides which hulls sail.
The day’s real status lives in two places: the operator’s own app or website, and the port authority. The Hellenic Coast Guard publishes the directory of port authorities. We do not print live sailing status here and never will. Any travel page claiming to list today’s cancellations is out of date by the time you read it.
What the operator owes you, and the exception that swallows most of it
If your ferry is cancelled, or its departure is delayed by more than 90 minutes, the carrier must offer you a choice: reimbursement of your ticket within seven days, or re-routing to your final destination under comparable conditions at the earliest opportunity, at no extra cost. That applies whatever the cause, weather included. Nothing is automatic. You have to ask.
That is the European Commission’s own wording on ship passenger rights, which sets out the rules of Regulation (EU) No 1177/2010. The Commission lists four things a carrier owes a passenger. Then it takes two of them back.
| What the rules give you | Does it survive a weather cancellation? |
|---|---|
| Refund or re-routing. Your fare back within 7 days, or re-routing to your destination at no extra cost | Yes. Offered whatever the cause |
| Meals and refreshments, in proportion to the waiting time, where they can reasonably be supplied | The exemptions the Commission names cover accommodation and compensation, not meals. Ask |
| Accommodation if you must stay overnight, which the carrier may cap at 80 euros a night for up to 3 nights | No. Not required when the cancellation was caused by severe weather |
| Compensation of 25 or 50 percent of the fare for a late arrival | No. Not due where severe weather or extraordinary circumstances prevented the service |
Read the right-hand column again, because it is the whole subject. The meltemi is severe weather. A sailing ban in a summer blow is precisely the circumstance in which the carrier is excused from paying for your hotel and from compensating you. So the money a cancelled ferry actually costs you, the lost hotel night, the missed transfer, the flight you had to rebook, is money you are very unlikely to recover from the ferry company. That is the legal position, not a failure of customer service.
The compensation bands, when they do apply, are for a late arrival, not a cancellation:
| Scheduled journey length | 25% of the fare | 50% of the fare |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 4 hours | 1 hour late | 2 hours late |
| 4 to 8 hours | 2 hours | 4 hours |
| 8 to 24 hours | 3 hours | 6 hours |
| Over 24 hours | 6 hours | 12 hours |
Greece adds a second layer. Greek coastal shipping has its own passenger charter of rights, under Law 3709/2008 as amended by Law 4150/2013. A port authority’s published charter states that when a departure is prohibited by bad weather the passenger may modify the ticket, or withdraw and be refunded the fare. Where both sets of rules reach you, you take whichever is more favourable. How they interact in a specific dispute is a lawyer’s question, not ours.
One case we will not guess at. A strike is not weather: the Commission’s exemption names severe weather and extraordinary circumstances such as natural disasters and security threats, and it does not name strikes. If a strike stops your sailing, ask the operator and the port authority what they are offering rather than assuming the weather rule applies. How Greek ferry strikes are called is covered in our ferry guide, and our editorial policy explains how we date and re-check the facts here.
The scramble for the next boat, and how to win it
A cancelled sailing empties its entire passenger list onto the next departure, and that departure was already mostly sold. The seats go in the order people ask for them. This is the whole argument for the phone over the queue: the queue moves at the speed of one agent, and the app does not.
The wrong assumption here costs an hour. The Commission’s wording is re-routing to your final destination under comparable conditions at no extra cost. It does not name a ship or a company, and what an operator will actually offer you is a seat on its own next sailing. Do not plan your day around being handed a ticket for a competitor’s boat.
So your real options, in order:
- Take the re-route if that operator’s next sailing gets you where you need to be in time.
- Buy onto another operator yourself if it does not, and claim the original fare back as a refund. You are out of pocket today in exchange for moving today. It is a gamble with your own money, and sometimes it is the right one.
- Take the refund and stay put.
If you are moving without a car, be flexible about class rather than about the boat. Deck and standard seating on a conventional ferry is the high-capacity inventory; cabins, vehicle space and high-speed seats are what sell out first.
Cars change the arithmetic. Vehicle deck space is scarce, so re-routing a car is much harder than re-routing a person. If you are driving a rental car onto a ferry, start earlier and expect less.
Have this ready before you call: booking reference, passenger names, the cancelled sailing, and the alternative you want. An agent does more for a passenger who arrives with an ask than for one who arrives with a grievance.
One trap quietly costs people money. If the operator issued a paper ticket and you collected it, you may have to hand it back before a refund is processed. Photograph it before you give it up.
Never book the last ferry before an international flight
Do not schedule a ferry back to Athens on the day you fly home. Sleep in Athens, or near your departure airport, the night before an international flight. Everything else here is preference. This one we insist on.
Here is why it is worth a night of your trip. A cancelled ferry is not the airline’s problem: air passenger rules cover what the airline does to you, not what the sea does to you, and if you are not at the gate you are a no-show, with your options set by your fare’s conditions rather than by any right. And a missed flight is not the ferry operator’s problem: its liability is the ferry fare, and in a weather cancellation not even your hotel. Each industry owes you a fraction of a trip. The cost of actually getting home sits in the gap between them, and it lands on you.
The buffer costs one night of accommodation and half a day of island time. Missing the flight costs a rebooked international fare, an unplanned night, and in August a seat on an aircraft that is already full. Our trip cost guide shows what a night in Athens is worth against that.
Two smaller rules follow from the same logic.
On your last island, take an early sailing, not the most convenient one. A morning departure has the rest of the day’s boats behind it if it fails. The last boat of the day has nothing behind it but tomorrow.
Finish on an island with an airport if you can. A domestic flight is a separate way off the island with a separate failure condition, and it can operate on a day the sea is closed. End your route somewhere with an airport and you have two exits instead of one.
Athens is not a penalty for this. A spare evening in the city is a good evening: see what to do with it, and check how our itineraries sequence the last leg. Then work out how you get from the port to the airport before the morning you need it.
When the sea closes, look for the other hull, not the other day
Four escape routes, in the order they tend to work. Each of them may be shut too, and you check them in this order because that is the order of the odds.
- The heavier boat. The big conventional ferries keep sailing in conditions that ground the light high-speed craft. If your catamaran is cancelled, check the conventional sailing on the same route before you accept a lost day. How the wind decides which boats sail is the mechanism worth understanding here.
- Another operator. A ban applies to the port and the sea state, but operators run different hulls on different routes, so a competitor’s ship may still be moving.
- Another port or route. The exposed leg is the one that closes. An indirect route through a bigger island can be open when the direct hop is not, and it is worth ten minutes on a map before you give up.
- The plane. On an island with an airport, a domestic flight is a separate mode with its own failure condition. It will be expensive at short notice and it may be full. It is still a way home, and it is why which islands have an airport is a routing decision and not a trivia question.
The honest caveat, once: in a serious multi-day blow everything stops, the conventional ships included, and there may be no way off the island that day at any price. Cleverness does not move you through that. A route with slack in it does, which is what our island hopping guide builds.
While you work the boats, make two calls. Your hotel on the island probably needs re-booking for tonight. Your hotel at the other end is expecting you and will otherwise mark you a no-show, which is treated far worse, and more expensively, than a phone call. Make both in the first hour, not the last.
If they refuse: the complaint route that actually exists
Greek law puts a clock and an address on this, and almost no traveller knows either.
Your complaint goes first to the company, the ticket issuer, the maritime agent or the port terminal operator, in writing, within two months of the date the service was provided or should have been provided. That two-month clock appears in both the European Commission’s rules and the Greek national procedure, so treat it as the real deadline. The carrier must then react within one month and give you a final reply no more than two months after receiving the complaint.
If you get no answer, or an inadequate one, you escalate. Greece’s official passenger complaints procedure for maritime transport routes you to the local Port Authority, or to the Directorate of Maritime Transport at the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy, which examines the complaint and takes it up with the carrier. There is a standard complaint form, and it is free to submit.
What a complaint needs is what only exists on the day: the ticket, the booking reference, the cancellation notice with its timestamp, what you asked for, what they said, and when. None of it is recoverable a month later. This is why the checklist above says screenshot everything.
Now the honest expectation, because an encouraging one would be a disservice. Getting the fare back is routine. Getting more than the fare, after a weather cancellation, is not, for the reason set out above: the operator is excused. Complain because you are owed your money, not because you expect to be made whole.
If a refund is agreed and then never arrives, a chargeback through your card issuer is a mechanism that exists. That is a statement about a mechanism, not a recommendation, and the rules belong to the card issuer. How we check and date the rules on this page is set out in our editorial policy.
What travel insurance does and does not do here
The weather exemption is what makes this section necessary. The operator does not have to pay for your unplanned hotel or your rebooked flight, so if anyone is going to pay for them, it is an insurer.
We will not tell you that travel insurance covers a cancelled ferry, because we cannot see your policy and policies differ by seller and by country. What we can tell you is what to look for in the document you already hold, before you need it:
- Does it cover a missed onward departure caused by the failure of a prior connection?
- Does it cover delay or cancellation caused by weather?
- What documentation does it demand from the carrier, and in what form?
The practical consequence is the same either way, which is why it belongs on this page. The evidence an insurer will ask for is the evidence you can only collect at the port: the cancellation notice, the timestamped booking, the receipts for what you had to buy. Collect it whether or not you think you will claim.
And the comparison worth sitting with: a buffer night in Athens costs a known, small amount today. A claim costs paperwork and an uncertain answer later. The buffer is the better product.
Build the trip so a cancelled boat costs you a day
You cannot argue with the wind, and you cannot argue with the port authority either. The only variable you control is what a cancellation is allowed to cost you.
Two things are worth carrying out of this page. The operator owes you a refund or another boat, and in bad weather nothing beyond that. And the night in Athens before your flight home is the cheapest insurance in Greek travel, which is why it is the one rule we insist on.
From here: the ferry network end to end, and routes with slack built into them.
Last checked July 2026. The EU passenger-rights wording, the Greek passenger charter and the national complaint route are re-checked on this page before every update.
Common questions
Do I get my money back if my Greek ferry is cancelled because of the weather?
Yes. Under the EU ship passenger rules, the carrier must offer you a choice between a refund of the ticket price, paid within seven days, and re-routing to your destination at no extra cost. That applies whatever the cause, weather included. What you do not get in a weather cancellation is compensation or a paid hotel, because the rules exempt the carrier when severe weather prevented the service (European Commission). Refunds are not automatic. You have to ask for one.
Who cancels ferries in Greece, the ferry company or the port?
The port authority and the coast guard suspend sailings when the state of the sea demands it, and the ferry company then cancels the sailings that cannot run. Greeks call the ban the apagorevtiko. It matters because the ticket desk cannot reverse a decision it did not make, because a ban can be lifted the same day, and because it may not cover every port, route or hull.
Will the ferry company pay for my hotel if I am stranded overnight?
Usually not, if the cause was severe weather. The EU rules do require accommodation when an overnight stay becomes necessary, which the carrier may cap at 80 euros a night for up to three nights, but they explicitly do not require it when the cancellation was caused by severe weather (European Commission). Budget for that possibility yourself, or carry insurance that covers it, and keep every receipt.
Can I be put on another company’s ferry?
Your entitlement is re-routing to your final destination under comparable conditions at no extra cost. The rules do not name a ship or a company, and what an operator will offer you is a seat on its own next sailing. If a competitor is still sailing and you must travel today, expect to buy that ticket yourself and claim the refund on the original. You are trading money now for time now, which is exactly why the first move is your phone and not the queue.
What happens if a cancelled ferry makes me miss my flight home?
That one lands on you, and it is the reason for the single rule this page insists on. Air passenger rules cover what the airline does to you, not what the sea does to you, and the ferry operator’s liability is the ferry fare. Never book a ferry back to Athens on the day you fly home. If it has already happened: call the airline immediately, check whether the island has an airport, and keep every document for a claim.
Are the fast ferries cancelled more often than the big ones?
Yes. The light high-speed catamarans stop before the big conventional ships do, which is the single most useful thing to know about Greek ferries in wind. The practical half: if your fast boat is cancelled, check the conventional sailing on the same route before you accept a lost day. Our ferry guide sets out how the wind decides which boats sail.
How do I find out whether ferries are sailing today?
From the operator’s own app or website, and from the port authority. Both are live. A travel guide is not, and any page claiming to list today’s cancellations is out of date by the time you read it, which is why we publish no sailing status here. Check the night before and again on the morning of travel, because a ban can be imposed or lifted between the two.
Should I buy travel insurance for a Greek island trip because of the ferries?
We will not sell you one or tell you what yours covers. The logic is this: in a weather cancellation the operator is excused from paying for your hotel and your rebooked flight, so an insurer is the only party who might. Read your own wording for missed onward departure, weather cover and documentation requirements, before you buy. And know that a buffer night in Athens is cheaper, simpler and more certain than any claim.