What happens if the weather turns?

What actually stops a charter

The shamal is a northwesterly that blows down the Gulf several times each winter. It raises a short, steep sea that makes a charter unpleasant rather than dangerous, and it is the reason almost every moved booking in Dubai gets moved. It typically lasts one to three days.

The other one is fog, which forms on still winter mornings and drops visibility to a few hundred metres. It delays a morning charter rather than cancelling it — it usually burns off by ten.

Rain is on the list of things that do not stop a charter. Dubai gets a handful of rainy days a year, they are short, and they leave the sea flat. A wet twenty minutes on a covered aft deck is not a cancelled afternoon.

• Shamal wind — the main cause, several times each winter
• Fog — delays winter morning charters, usually clear by 10:00
• Rain — brief, does not raise a sea, not a cancellation
• Heat — never a cancellation, but moves charters to early or late

Who decides, and when

The captain, on the morning of the charter. It is their licence and their judgement, and it is not a negotiation — a captain who sails a boat they consider unsafe is risking more than a refund.

The call is deliberately made late because forecasts on this coast change quickly. Cancelling three days out on a forecast that turns into a flat calm helps nobody, and moving a booking that then did not need moving costs the customer a date they wanted.

What you get

If we cancel, you choose: a new date, or a full refund including the deposit. Not a credit note, not a partial. That is the correct standard and it is worth confirming it in writing with any operator before you pay.

If you would rather not sail on a day the captain considers perfectly fine — some people simply do not want a lumpy afternoon — that is a normal cancellation and the usual terms apply: outside seven days the deposit moves, inside seven days it is retained.

The middle case is a charter that starts and is cut short. In practice the crew will offer to reroute into sheltered water first, and a charter abandoned genuinely early is usually settled by agreement rather than by clause.