Don’t come crying to me.

I’m going to be blunt here from the very beginning, because honestly, if you can’t handle straight talk, you shouldn’t be reading this in the first place. So, are you ready? Here goes: If you take a cruise and you don’t purchase travel insurance to go with it, you’re a fool.

Between entitlement and xenophobia, people in the United States have come to take a lot of things for granted and have been able to find handy scapegoats for just about everything. But when it comes to protecting yourself and your family on a vacation, the ball is firmly in your court.

Every travel agent worth their salt, and every single cruise line sales agent working the phones is going to offer you travel insurance when you book your cruise. Some call it Vacation Protection or Cruise Care. It comes down to the same thing. Some agencies will even offer you free insurance (though really, you get what you pay for with that, so I don’t recommend it – get whatever other perk they’re offering instead, be it on-board credit, a bottle of wine, or a set of travel mugs). But the point is, no matter what it’s called, it’s important.

You are not exempt. From anything. We all have our clumsy moments. The weather will act up any time it damn well chooses. Airlines operate using a set of rules so arcane that I’m fairly certain that chicken bones and goat slaughter are involved in creating them. And yet, I’ve heard people decline the insurance I’ve offered them because, “Oh, it’s just a short little cruise, nothing’s gonna happen” or, “We are GOING on this cruise no matter what.”

But accidents don’t care how long the voyage is, and catastrophes don’t give a tin damn about your plans. Also, not for nothin’? Once you’re on board (or when you board your flight to get to the port), you’re surrounded by thousands of people with brand new germs, and you’ll be going to places that have germs your immune system has never even heard of. It’s enough to give a hypochondriac a nervous breakdown. Me, I’m waiting actively for the zombie apocalypse, so if I start to think about all of those germs for too long, I develop a mild facial tic.

Travel insurance is not just for the old, the infirm, or for a massively long sailing. Travel insurance is for everyone during every season. You have insurance on your car, despite the massive number of trips to the grocery you know you’re going to take with absolutely zero mishaps. The health care debate in the US is enough to bring the government to a complete standstill. And yet so many people decide that the vacation they’ve invested so heavily in, that they’ve worked so hard for, simply isn’t worth the few extra dollars to protect it if something goes wrong. It boggles my mind.

While I know that there are a number of people out there who think that travel agents only sell insurance so that they can make more money and therefore isn’t really worth anything, that’s simply not the case. I also know that insurance options can be confusing and require a lot of stupid research to figure out what it is that’s covered, whether or not there’s a pre-existing conditions waiver, and whether you’ll get reimbursed in cash or in a future cruise credit. But research can be rewarding (and your travel agent or personal vacation planner will be able to give you all the information you need – just ask!).

I had a client get a sinus infection while she was on a cruise. A trip to the ship’s infirmary got her some nice medication and a bill for $290. Her travel insurance reimbursed her quickly after she submitted the paperwork.

On that same trip, her friend’s teenage daughter had a spastic moment and broke her pinky finger. Again, covered.

And now, it’s hurricane season, a season that takes up nearly half of the year. It started in July, and this year has been an active one for hurricanes. During one of them, two ships in the Port of San Juan were commanded to leave port hours earlier than planned, leaving 450 passengers stranded in Puerto Rico. One cruise line provided their passengers with 2 nights lodging and, if they had their passport, a flight to meet up with the ship in Barbados. If they didn’t have their passport, they were given a flight home. The other cruise line, however, gave stranded passengers information on local hotel availability and that’s about it. If you’d purchased your air through that cruise line, then they would fly you to the next port to meet up with the ship and also put you up for the night. Otherwise, the passengers were, essentially, screwed.

Cruise Line A did everything right from a passenger goodwill standpoint, despite the fact that they legally weren’t bound to do ANY of it. If you actually read the ticket contract that comes along with your cruise line-issued documents (either paper docs or e-docs), you’ll see that they cover their butts incredibly well and are released from indemnity in cases like this. But Cruise Line A chose to do everything it could for its passengers, and I believe that it won them a lot of fans in the press. Cruise Line B stuck to its obligations as outlined in the cruise contract and nothing more. Which means they weren’t out any money, but boy did they piss off their passengers!

However, travel insurance exists because of things like this. Any passengers with travel insurance were likely able to get new flights and meet the ship at the next port, as well as having their hotels and meals covered in the interim, or they’d have been able to get new flights home without having to worry overmuch about the change fees, etc. Traveling during hurricane season without insurance is BEYOND foolish. It’s completely asinine. It’s ignorant. It’s stupid.

The cruise line is not to blame for the weather. Their captains are there to keep you safe, so if the itinerary does have to change due to weather, kindly do a bit of lighthearted grousing and then get over it. The captain isn’t going to put 2500+ people in danger (plus crew and ship) just because you’ve never been to Dunn’s River Falls. If you DO get to Dunn’s River Falls and you slip and break your ankle, it’s not the island’s fault. And it certainly won’t be the ship’s fault when you’ve gone to hospital to have it looked at and they leave without you.

If, however, you have travel insurance, your flight home and repatriation are covered in that case. If you need Med-Evac service off of the ship to a shoreside hospital, that’s covered. Lose your luggage? Covered. Your belongings are stolen? Covered.

Me, I’m sailing next week. Currently, the plan is for a Western Caribbean itinerary – Ocho Rios, Jamaica; Georgetown, Grand Cayman; and Cozumel, Mexico to be exact. But Hurricane Rina is getting a little uppity, already a number of ships have been routed away from Grand Cayman, and she seems to be headed directly for Cozumel. Which basically means for me that even if she’s passed by the time we get there, the snorkeling in Grand Cayman is going to be lousy. And that makes me sad, but it also means that I’ll spend less on shore excursions. Who knows? She might still be wreaking havoc when I get down there, and we’ll be re-routed to different islands altogether. Y’know what? I don’t think that’s going to upset me too much. In the end, I’m on a vacation and on the ocean. It’s the sort of scenario that travel insurance is made for. I’m prepared, and if I wasn’t, I’d have absolutely nobody to cry to about it.

So I’ll say it again: Anything can happen out there. You’re spending a lot of money on your vacation. Protect it. Because if you don’t, you’re not only a fool, but you’ve nobody to blame but yourself when something happens. And eventually, it will. Even Murphy sails sometimes, and he brings his law with him.

Oh, and while you’re at it? GET A PASSPORT ALREADY. Just because you currently CAN slide by with just a birth certificate and your photo ID doesn’t mean it’ll always be that way. Seriously, it’s not that hard. I hate doing paperwork and yet even I have a passport. It’s good for 10 years, it’s accepted as ID nearly everywhere, and should you happen to get stuck on an island and need to fly back home instead of coming back on the ship, re-entry into the country will be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. Or, as outlined above, you’ll actually be able to meet your cruise in Barbados if you get stuck in San Juan. Without a passport AND without travel insurance, you’re either stuck in San Juan or going straight home. Which is definitely not a relaxing cruise experience.