Also worth considering is WHERE storms tend to originate during which months.

Many of the August and September storms tend to be those that are referred to as 'Cape Verde Storms,' which are those originating from systems coming off the west coast of Africa that develop into Tropical Storms and Hurricanes as they transverse the Atlantic.

In October, the storms tend to be more 'home grown,' meaning they spin up in areas closer to the US mainland... the Bahamas, the Western Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico.

So, while the raw number of hurricanes tends to be greater through about the third week of September, those that do develop in October are more likely to affect the ports of the Western Caribbean and the US Gulf coast.

Please note that the above are only generalizations, not hard and fast rulse.

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If August is the one time you can take the kids, why not consider another itinerary, even if it means flying. Usually you don't miss ports on the Alaskan cruise, but I've heard that some sailings this summer had to miss Victoria. Normally I would put Mexican Riviera cruises into the "usually hurricane proof" category, but more hurricanes seemed to have hit in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico this summer than the Caribbean. Go figure. One of my hubby's workers was on the Splendor last month and missed two of his scheduled ports.

On our nine cruises, we have only missed one port, and that was Kona, due to high waves. We were even in a tropical storm in the western Caribbean in November (it chased us back to Miami, where it turned into a hurricane just hours after we flew home), but made it to our ports.

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Todd, the chance of having a hurricane encounter are really quite small and the chance of losing a port even smaller.

We hae sailed twice in hurricane season (out of a total of three Caribbean cruises and have neer had a problem)

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