How to Get Your Prescriptions While Cruising

If you take a daily prescription and you’re thinking about cruising for more than a week or two at a time, you can absolutely make it work. You just have to plan ahead more than you would at home, and sometimes spend a little more.

Dave and I dealt with this for years across two boats and thousands of miles of cruising, from Pacific Mexico and Central America to the Florida Keys and the Bahamas. We used a lot of different approaches depending on where we were and what insurance we had at the time. Here’s what actually works.

A quick note before we get started: this article is written from a US perspective. If you have insurance from another country, some of the specifics will be different, but the general framework (plan ahead, know your options, don’t wait until the last minute) still applies.

The Three Situations You’ll Face

How you handle prescriptions while cruising depends on which of these three situations you’re in:

• Cruising in the US. Easiest. You’ve got access to every pharmacy in your insurance network and a working postal system.
• Leaving the US for a trip. You’re heading to the Bahamas, Canada, or wherever for a few months with the intention of coming back. Doable with planning.
• Outside the US indefinitely. Hardest. No universal answer, varies by country.

The one rule that applies to all three: never wait until the last minute to refill. We’ve had refills take three weeks when we expected a few days, and once in Mexico we discovered a medication wasn’t available at all. Build in a cushion.

Cruising in the US

Good news: you almost never need more than a 90-day supply at a time when you’re cruising the US. You’ll be back in range of a pharmacy long before you run out. If you do need more than 90 days, read the “Leaving the US” section below.

You have two real options:

Option 1: Mail order pharmacy to a marina

Use your insurance company’s mail order pharmacy and have the medications shipped to a marina or mail drop along your route. This works best if you can be a little flexible about where you are and when.

A few things to get right:

• Call the marina ahead of time and confirm they’ll accept and hold a package for you before you arrive. Some marinas won’t accept packages for anyone who isn’t a current slipholder, so don’t assume.
• Don’t order your refill too early. If your travel gets delayed (and it will), your meds could end up a hundred miles from where you actually are.
• This works best if you tend to stay put for a while at each stop.

Some insurers limit the states they’ll ship medications to. Make sure you check the fine print before you rely on a service not available to you.

For more on getting things shipped to you on the move (including which shipping options to request and what to do when a marina won’t sign for packages), see my full guide to getting packages when cruising.

Option 2: Transfer to local pharmacies as you go

Use pharmacies in your insurance network and transfer the prescription whenever you need a refill. Your doctor can usually write the prescription for a 90-day supply even at a retail pharmacy.

You’ll pay a little more than mail order, but you don’t have to worry about packages chasing you around. This is the better choice if you’re on the move a lot.

Once you have your 90-day supply on board, think about where to actually keep it. Heat, humidity, and the wrong storage spot can all damage medications before the expiration date. Here’s how to store your meds safely on a boat.

Leaving the US for a Trip

Heading to the Bahamas, Canada, or somewhere else for a few months and then returning to the US? This takes some advance planning, but it’s not hard once you know the system.

Step 1: Check your refills

First, make sure you have enough refills left on the prescription for the entire time you’ll be gone. If you’re switching between a retail pharmacy and a mail order pharmacy (or the other way), you may need a brand new prescription called or faxed in.

Fair warning: this can feel like a Catch-22. My insurance company wouldn’t even tell me the vacation override procedure until I had refills sitting at the retail pharmacy. Then once I had them called in, they told me I needed a new prescription faxed to the mail order pharmacy. Sort this part out early.

Step 2: Request a vacation override

Once refills are in place, ask your insurance company about their vacation override procedure. Use that exact phrase when you call, because it’s the official term. A vacation override is basically an early refill that your insurance will still cover.

Every insurance company handles these differently. You’ll usually need to provide an itinerary showing when and where you’re leaving. I used to draft up the date and place we intended to leave the US and attach a copy of our US Coast Guard documentation as proof we actually owned a boat.

Sometimes the insurance company fills the override through a retail pharmacy, sometimes through mail order. Just ask and follow their rules.

Step 3: Start the process a month early

The insurance company will tell you something like “you can’t apply for an override more than two weeks before you leave.” Ignore that timeline. Twice ours took closer to three weeks to actually be in our hands, once because the local pharmacy didn’t have enough of a medication in stock, and once because the mail order pharmacy just took longer than expected.

Here’s the workaround: start about a month before your real departure date, and tell the insurance company you’re leaving two weeks earlier than you actually are. That gets you inside their window, gives you time to handle any delays, and doesn’t cost you anything if your departure slips. Insurance companies don’t verify dates against your actual movements.

Step 4: Understand the limits

Most insurance companies only allow one vacation override per prescription per year. Some define “year” as a calendar year, others as a rolling 365 days. Ask which yours uses, because it matters if you’re planning back-to-back trips.

What if the override isn’t enough?

If you need more meds than the vacation override covers, or if your insurance company declines the request (yes, they can), you have a few options:

• Pay out of pocket at a local pharmacy. The whole price, no insurance. In Marathon, Florida (a major jumping-off point for the Bahamas, Mexico, and the Caribbean), local pharmacies are familiar with cruisers needing extra refills and are good at finding discount programs for specific drugs. But watch out: some drugs, even generics, are expensive. This is one of the hidden costs of cruising.
• Puerto Rico and USVI workaround. If you’re heading to US territories like Puerto Rico or the USVI, your insurance may work at local pharmacies. There’s also US mail service, and most mail order pharmacies will ship there. You can also transfer prescriptions to local pharmacies.

Cruising Outside the US Indefinitely

If you’re leaving the US with no clear return date, the situation gets harder. There’s no universal answer, and your approach will depend on where you’re going and what you take.

If you still have US insurance

Get as many refills as possible whenever you’re back in the US. A well-timed vacation override can sometimes net you up to six months of medications at once.

Getting US prescriptions shipped to you overseas is tricky. The rules vary by country, and you’ll need to research regulations for each place you plan to travel. Our experience in Mexico was that the cost and delay of getting medications through customs just wasn’t worth it.

Can a friend bring meds to you?

Short answer: no. It’s generally a customs violation to carry prescriptions with someone else’s name on them, or prescriptions that aren’t in their original bottles. I know, I know, what are the chances they’ll get caught? But do you really want a friend or relative potentially in legal trouble over your blood pressure pills? We eliminated this option.

Filling prescriptions in foreign countries

That leaves getting your prescription wherever you actually are. Do your homework before you need the refill, not when you’re down to your last three pills.

In Mexico (at least when we were there), most medications were easy to get even without a prescription. But they weren’t as cheap as we’d been led to believe. Some things (mild painkillers, for example) required a local doctor’s prescription, and many pharmacies couldn’t fill pain prescriptions at all. I also had to switch my cholesterol medicine because my usual one wasn’t sold there. It’s been a few years since we cruised Mexico, so verify the current situation before you count on this.

In the Bahamas, you can reportedly take your prescription bottle (with valid refills left) to a local pharmacy. But you have to actually be somewhere with a pharmacy or clinic, and they have to have access to your medicine. Most of the islands have only the bare minimum of pharmacy access, and a lot of medications come in through the mail boat system. The mail boat runs on a schedule, but weather and breakdowns can easily mean weeks between deliveries. I would not count on refills anywhere in the Bahamas outside Nassau, and then only for fairly common prescriptions. Worth trying elsewhere if you’re desperate, but don’t plan your cruise around it.

A few more realities

Many countries require a prescription from a local doctor, which adds days or weeks to the process, especially if it turns out you need to switch drugs entirely. How we handled medical issues more broadly while cruising is a separate topic, but the same principle applies: plan for delays.

Don’t rely on cruising guides for current drug availability information. That stuff changes too fast. Check with cruisers who are actually in the area right now. SSCA station hosts are a great resource, and many Facebook groups for specific cruising areas are excellent. Just make sure the info you’re getting is recent, not from three seasons ago.

Some cruisers find they do better paying out of pocket for prescriptions. That wasn’t true for us. But you’ll want to check your specific situation.

The Bottom Line

Needing daily prescriptions does not rule out cruising. It just means another thing on your pre-departure checklist. Start early, know your insurance company’s vacation override rules, build in cushion for delays, and don’t assume anything about drug availability in foreign countries until you’ve talked to someone who’s actually there.

Got More “But What About…” Questions?

Prescriptions are one of dozens of practical worries that can make cruising feel like a bigger deal than it is. Every Wednesday, I send out The Boat Galley newsletter covering the real-world logistics of life aboard: provisioning, boat systems, planning, safety, and the day-to-day stuff that actually determines whether you enjoy cruising or get overwhelmed by it. If you want practical answers from someone who’s been there, join us here. It’s free, and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Some links in this article (including all Amazon links) are affiliate links, meaning that we earn from qualifying purchases.