Sailing around Raja Ampat in Indonesia on a private yacht
Travel doesn’t get more immersive than sailing around Indonesia on a handcrafted, fully staffed yacht.
“Lights off,” whispered our Barcelona-born dive master Yeray Moreno as we were about to climb back into the tender. The sun had long dipped behind the horizon, and moments earlier we were snorkelling in the dark, shallow waters of Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago where the Pacific and Indian Oceans converge. The beams of our lanterns had lit up shoals of silvery fish and a mottled wobbegong, a pair of thumb-sized octopuses, constellations of electric-blue sea stars, and a lone green turtle the shape of a giant wok. “Now wave your arms,” Moreno instructed. And as I swayed my limbs through the glassy water, bioluminescent plankton danced around my fingertips – thousands of tiny lights, as numerous as the stars that speckled the sky overhead. It was magic. Yet, on a five-day jaunt with Rascal Voyages, it was just one of myriad pinch-me moments.
A day earlier we had boarded our ship, Rebel, in the port of Sorong, the main gateway to this island group in the heart of the Coral Triangle, an underwater Amazon that spans more than 5.7 million square kilometres of coral-rich ocean between Indonesia, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands. Since his first dive at age eight, Moreno has explored reefs in all corners of the globe, but he assured us that Raja Ampat was hard to beat. “In a two-metre square of reef, you’ll find more coral biodiversity than in the entire Caribbean,” he said. More than 2200 species of coral reef fish swim in these waters, and at least 200 of them are found only here.
From the moment my snorkel mask first dipped below the water line, it was clear that Moreno hadn’t exaggerated. Below me unfurled a Pixar-perfect sprawl of reef, a seemingly endless field of corals shaped like cabbage and curly kale, punctuated by feather-like plumes swaying like peacock quills in the current. There were jolts of orange and rosy pink so vibrant they looked as though they were digitally manipulated. And in Dayang, our stop on day two, we spotted manta rays calmly floating around like bedsheets lost at sea. Rainbows of fish and other reef creatures shot away wherever we turned. A couple of clownfish in their sea-anemone abode looked at me with angry eyes, as though they were saying, “What the hell is he doing here?”
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Back on board, I tried to make sense of these kaleidoscopic scenes with a well-thumbed field guide of the reef-dwellers of the Indo-Pacific. But with my untrained eyes my attempts were futile. Even the clownfish, which I thought I recognised, covered three pages with a dozen or so subspecies. “Lots of fish here can differ from their peers just a kilometre away,” Moreno said. “They’ve evolved to the specific needs of their habitats. It’s like a laboratory for evolution.”
It’s a small miracle we were even there. Around 2008, British entrepreneur Steve Ebsworth was floating off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumbawa island on the lookout for a place to build a resort he had in mind. But some 300 metres out at sea, his tiny boat capsized, and it turned out that the local captain he had hired couldn’t swim. Ebsworth clung onto the boat and captain and eventually managed to swim back to the mainland, where he arrived on a deserted beach overlooking the vast nothingness of the ocean. The wild beauty inspired him to launch Rascal Voyages, a way for people to discover Indonesia in the same – but much safer – serendipitous way.
Rascal Voyages launched its first ship, Rascal, in 2017. Our boat, the slightly wider-built Rebel, launched during the pandemic. Both riff on the design of a pinisi, a traditional wooden sailing vessel that finds its origin in the spice boats of South Sulawesi. Ebsworth left out the hallmark masts and sails (beautiful but rarely used) to carve out space for five staterooms above deck and a rooftop sun deck where we’d watch golden sunsets from beanbag chairs and shoot biodegradable fish food-filled golf balls into the ocean. The rooms, spread over the two upper decks, vary in size and layout, but all deliver plenty of space and rootsy design touches such as local wood carvings and hand-woven ikat textiles.
Diving is the name of the game here, and Rascal Voyages has the equipment and expertise to lead both novice divers and seasoned scuba devotees on underwater adventures. But what sets it apart from the lion’s share of cruises plying these waters is that its routes don’t revolve around diving alone (unless guests want to, of course). There’s a laissez-faire attitude to the itinerary, shared nightly after dinner on a blackboard, to leave space for mountain hikes, village visits and lolling at makeshift beach clubs on deserted islands if the weather is particularly nice. Or, like we did one day, bust out the tender to get up close with a pod of Bryde’s whales that captain Ronnie had spotted in the hazy distance. Like frazzled office workers, these baleen whales are innately drawn to tropical climes.
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The crew, some plucked from top-end resorts such as Aman, were similarly easygoing. Like clockwork, on return from aquatic jaunts and on-land excursions, we’d arrive to the full team welcoming us back with cheers, cold towels, and frosty passionfruit-spiked lemonades to cool us down. Lunches and dinners, courtesy of Moyo-born chef Ginseng, were a constant surprise: beef tartare, curried local fish, citrusy salads and prawns buried under heaps of zingy salsa – all so fresh and flavourful, they’d give many a five-star resort a run for their money. One night around dinnertime, we were directed onto the tender and led to a palm-studded islet nearby. The team had spent all afternoon setting up a bona-fide beachside dining room, replete with fairy lights, floral decorations, and “welcome” spelled out with seashells in the sand. That dinner, a seafood feast of grilled lobster and paella, ended up with the crew jamming Indonesian pop tunes and us dancing around a campfire under the stars.
On our last day, we anchored in a palm-frilled bay in Waigeo, Raja Ampat’s largest island. We had spent the day hiking to Kali Biru, a mythical river in the jungle with eye-popping blue water that’s said to have brought battle strength to the raja from this region – just one of the folk tales floating around these islands. After a detour past caves filled with ancient rock paintings and ramshackle huts hiding in the jungle fringe, we returned to Rebel for G&Ts and charcuterie on the top deck. As the sky lit up in spectacular shades of orange and pink and the chorus of birdsong grew louder, our last company, a couple of local fisherfolk casting their nets from a low-slung kayak nearby, disappeared in the darkness. With our Rebel the only ship left, and not a single speck of light in the surrounding mountains, it felt as though we had tapped into a special kind of luxury – just us and the waves, and a million of the world’s most fascinating sea creatures swimming right beneath our feet.
The writer was a guest of Rascal Voyages. The group’s Indonesia destinations include Raja Ampat, Komodo, the Spice Islands and, launching soon, Rote Island. rascalvoyages.com
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