• Professional cruise directors
• Outdoor sleeping facilities
• Complimentary snorkelling equipment and two sea canoes (add SUP)
• Free tea, soft drinks, juices, coffee and mineral water
• Excellent food and snacks (vegetarian and special menus on request)
• Dining in the spacious air-conditioned lounge
• Teak wooden furniture in the lounge, cabins and on the deck
• Spacious sun and semi-covered decks
• Mooring fees
• Fuel surcharge

• Visits to restaurants, museums, galleries etc during the trip
• A fine selection of wines, beer and spirits for sale
• Travel to and from the vessel (including internal/domestic airfares)

What To Expect

While many of you are seasoned travellers, some of you may be unfamiliar with the ways and means of travelling in the remoter regions where we journey. Cruising in eastern Indonesia on a traditional wooden pinisi ship can be an exciting new world for some.

Each cruise is led by professional, multilingual tour leaders who will escort guests in all activities both on land and at sea, answer any questions, provide in-depth daily briefings, and ultimately ensure the smooth running of every aspect of the cruise.

Life On Board

Life on board our ships is one of pure enjoyment, with good food, top-class service and fine company mixed with just the right balance of exploration and relaxation. Whilst on board, guests are immersed in a world of barefoot fun and adventure, with air-conditioned private en-suite cabins, indoor and outdoor social hubs and dining areas, sun decks, a wide selection of Indonesian, Western and Asian cuisine, a full bar, and highly attentive service from our crew, whose smiles and friendly personalities offer an even greater insight into the Indonesian way of life.

Food

Our galleys are staffed with talented individuals who pride themselves on being able to conjure up all manner of dishes and delicacies from across the world, using only the best quality meat, seafood and fresh produce available – with the latter often sourced from local markets and the fishermen we meet along the way. Vegetarian dishes and most special dietary requirements can be accommodated with minimal fuss. Our stewards are on hand all day to serve meals and make sure you have all you need; from cold towels and fresh juices to a full plate of food and an iced drink whenever you need it.

While all non-alcoholic drinks are inclusive, each boat has a full cash bar stocked with local and imported wines, imported spirits and domestic beer, usually at local prices.

Accommodation

Our comfortable cabins are located below decks and offer all the necessary amenities, including double beds or twin bunks, private en-suite bathrooms, lots of natural light, individually controlled air-conditioning, ample storage space, and plenty of electrical and USB outlets.

Each boat also includes a salon, bar, sundeck and outdoor dining areas.

We Respect the Environment

We respect the environment in which we operate and are deeply committed to the integrity and preservation of the Indonesian Archipelago.

We show locals the value of protecting the species they have. For example, whale sharks are under constant threat due to the sky-high value of their fins, but thanks to our visits, local fishermen are paid a healthy fee for spotting the whale sharks and letting you in the water to be up close to them. As a result, the fishermen are very glad to protect these beautiful animals.

We also work with local NGOs on coral restoration projects in the area, and support centres like the Tasikoki Wildlife Rescue Centre which helps to rehabilitate animals back into the wild and put an end to animal trafficking.

We Support Local Communities

Our motto for these sailing adventures is “Seeing Indonesia through Indonesian eyes”. We hire locals and work with local communities to promote authentic cultural experiences and interactions between tourists and locals to foster mutual understanding and respect.

More than half of our tour guides are women. In Indonesia the workforce is extremely male-dominated, so this is a way for us to break down barriers and create a more inclusive workforce.

We partner with local NGOs working on community development projects. As well as make an effort to bring life-changing water filters, glasses, school books and LED lights to the remote villages we visit. We buy from local fishermen, and vendors and always pay the locals when they treat us to a cultural performance.

We have created a series of three books which are available for sale on our boats. The money from each book sold is entirely invested back in creating new books to distribute to communities we visit. These are just some of the ways we work to offer a responsible and equitable sailing experience.

Pattimura International Airport Ambon

Sultan Babullah Airport

Itinerary: Scents of the Spice Islands

Day 1

Ambon town is one of the oldest European outposts in the region and in Wallace’s time, it was the capital of the Moluccas. Wallace collected some stunning species on the island and said that it “…always remain as a bright spot in the review of my Eastern travels since it was there that I first made the acquaintance of those glorious birds and insects, which render the Moluccas classic ground in the eyes of the naturalist, and characterise its fauna as one of the most remarkable and beautiful upon the globe.” Upon arrival at the airport, cars will take you to the Ombak Putih at her mooring in the harbour.

After you have settled in and freshened up, you go on an (optional) short tour of the island. You visit the market and see a traditional Balieo house. Also on your tour visit the ancient Wapauwe Old Mosque (1414), the Immanuel Church (1512) and finally Fort Amsterdam (1514), one of the first European forts built in the Moluccas. Rumphius, an important German botanist, lived in the fort from 1660 to 1670 and you see copies of some of his psychedelic paintings of local brightly coloured fish.

After this, you return to the boat for lunch before heading out on your way to the Banda Islands.

Day 2

Today you reach the remote and legendary Banda Islands. Famous for their natural beauty and cultural heritage, and the well-preserved remnants of an extraordinary history of imperialist rivalry, these islands are quite simply one of Indonesia’s highlights. Banda was originally the world’s only source of nutmeg and mace, valued for their rarity and high cost by aristocrats and elites.

This is a very special destination. Since conditions of wind and tide will determine the order in which you visit various Banda islands, your activities here can’t be assigned to a particular day. Here’s what you aim to cover. In the capital Banda Neira, on the biggest island, Neira, you land near the elegant arches of Hotel Maulana – a little slice of Somerset Maugham. It’s a pleasant stroll through the quaint colonial outpost’s characterful streets, inspecting notable residences, a museum, churches and a waterfront market. Brooding overall is the mediaeval-looking Fort Belgica, its five crumbling bastions now solidly rebuilt. The population is a handsome mix of Malay, Arab, Dutch and Melanesian. Just across the harbour is Banda’s perfect, jungle-clad volcanic cone Gunung Api (‘Fire Mountain’ – 640 metres). The fit and ambitious might make an early morning ascent up a challenging track to the top for stunning views.

There are some excellent coral reefs nearby and you should see some amazing marine life whilst snorkelling. Ironically, in the less-than-pristine waters of the harbour, you have a good chance of seeing (at dusk) arguably the world’s most stunning fish, the small but jewel-like Mandarin Fish.

Day 3 – 4

You choose from some of the other small islands of the Banda archipelago – Lonthoir, Ai, Run, Hatta – each of them with its own remnants of old plantations, Dutch cemeteries and fortifications. The tiny outlying island of Run was the subject of an unbelievable real estate deal when in 1667, under the Treaty of Breda, it was ceded by the English to the Dutch in exchange for Manhattan. Yes, the Manhattan where New York stands.

On the island of Ai, you can visit Fort Revenge, built by the English before being captured by the Dutch. On Lonthor you enjoy the tranquil beauty of nutmeg groves, where the shapely fruit-bearing trees grow in the shelter of towering, gigantic kenari or native almond trees. With any luck you spot the Elegant Imperial Pigeon, a species Wallace discovered and named, which can swallow nutmegs whole. You observe the age-old technique of harvesting by hand and can taste (and buy) baked goods, condiments and jams flavoured with fresh mace and nutmeg. The fruit enclosing the nutmeg seed is sold dried and has a unique and intense flavour. It is a delicacy rarely obtainable outside the Banda Islands.

You also climb up to fortress Hollandia and go on to meet the last of the ‘perkeniers’ – the small-holder farmers who managed the plantations for the Dutch, on land parcels known as ‘perken’. You’ll learn of more recent wars and eruptions that shook these lovely islands, and value, even more, their current peace and tranquillity.

Leaving Banda you navigate through the Sonnegat (‘Sun’s gap’) between Neira and Gunung Api, possibly escorted by kora-kora – the big Moluccan galleys used traditionally for ceremony and warfare, propelled by banks of warrior-oarsmen.

Day 5

On Saparua you land beside Dutch Fort Duurstede (1691), which was stormed in 1817 in a revolt led by Ambonese Kapitan Pattimura, a national hero and martyr. His story is told by vivid museum dioramas. Brightly painted bemo mini-buses will take you to a morning market before you sail to nearby Nusalaut. Rarely visited by outsiders, this island is home to a Christian community after early missionaries planted their faith here at the same time that Islam was spreading through the archipelago.

You visit the Eben-Haezer church founded in 1719. Nearby is the restored Dutch Fort Beverwyck, built in 1657 in a distinctive architectural style you’ve not yet encountered. A highlight here is a lunchtime feast of wonderful local dishes – freshly prepared by villager hosts from forest, garden and sea produce. It’s your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try papeda, the most famous and unusual of the many sago dishes in this region. Your next destination is the Island of Manipa.

Day 6

Manipa Island is said to have magical powers, because none of the Portuguese, Dutch or WW2 Japanese who occupied the surrounding islands ever landed here. The spell doesn’t apply to Indonesian ships, so you land at Uwe township for lessons in village technology. Its gardens produce cashews, while the leaves of forest Melaleuca cajuputi are pot-distilled to make a volatile oil called kayu putih or cajeput. It’s famed throughout Indonesia as a universal panacea: cosmetic, antiseptic, insecticide, decongestant, analgesic, expectorant, antispasmodic, stimulant and tonic.

You also view the production of the traditional Moluccan food staple, sago, a nutritious flour washed from the fibrous trunk of the sago palm. Sago can be baked into easily transportable dry cakes, which Wallace often subsisted on, while the palm also provides building material and thatch. After an afternoon of snorkelling, you cruise on towards Belang-Belang.

Day 7

Deserted, white-sand Belang-Belang is a real beachcomber’s paradise, where you can launch your full flotilla of watercraft, kayaks and paddle boards. At Obi Latu, mountains clad in forest and clove plantations plunge spectacularly into the sea.

You visit isolated Manatahan, a village of migrant Bhutanese from Sulawesi hundreds of miles to the west. Migration is not unusual in this island world where people are accustomed to moving by boat, and islands are sparsely populated or uninhabited. In past times the picturesque channels around Obi were dotted with the sails of local spice traders, Portuguese caravels, Spanish galleons, Dutch yachts and English pinnaces. Now you encounter friendly fishers and their outrigger dugouts, colourful timber island-trading craft and sometimes little lambo sloops still trading under sail.

Day 8

By today you will have lost track of time and place, but your crew won’t have. They will have delivered you on schedule to the Patinti Strait and Doworalamo, where you visit a village of the famous sea nomads, known in Eastern Indonesia as Sama-Bajo. Scattered widely through South-East Asia, sea nomads spent their entire lives from birth to death on their small sailboats called lipa-lipa. Now the modern world has pushed them ashore. Landless, their homes are always built on stilts over coral reefs or the tidal margins of remote islands such as this one.

You also have opportunities for swimming, snorkelling and beach-combing before our ship continues on its northerly course.

Day 9

You wake up off the western coast of Bacan, another of Indonesia’s historic spice sultanates. You go ashore to explore the forested slopes where Wallace made some of his greatest zoological discoveries, including the Moluccan Cuscus, the Standardwing Bird of Paradise, the world’s largest bee Megachile pluto, and the huge and magnificent Golden Birdwing Butterfly.

Wallace described the latter species as the “finest butterfly in the world”. When he caught the first male in 1859 he wrote: “When I took it out of my net and opened its gorgeous wings, I was nearer fainting with delight and excitement than I have ever been in my life; my heart beat violently, and the blood rushed to my head, leaving a headache for the rest of the day.” Very few Westerners have ever seen this species alive and no groups of tourists have ever been taken to see it before. Of course, there is no guarantee you will see it – but you try very hard and will be employing as your guide the one person on Bacan who knows exactly where it can be found.

You also keep a close watch for these and a host of other animals, some of them endemic to these islands, including parrots, cockatoos, lorikeets, hornbills, the elusive cuscus and the endangered black macaque – the only monkey in Maluku. It’s the wrong side of the Wallace Line for monkeys; these ones were introduced hundreds of years ago by North Sulawesi.

Day 10

Sunrise finds you in Indonesia’s most stunning seascape. Four perfect, brilliant-green volcanic-cone islands emerge from the sea in a straight line stretching south to north, parallel to the rugged, forested spine of the big island called Halmahera. They are Makian, Moti, Tidore and Ternate. Makian is dominated by volcanic Mount Kiebesi (1357 metres) towering over its palm-fringed, white-sand beaches and crystal clear waters.

There are interesting expeditions ashore and good places to snorkel. Later you cruise towards Payahe Bay on the mainland of Halmahera, which was another of the Spice Sultanates, formerly called Gilolo.

Your landfall is a remote beach full of outrigger fishing craft, for an easy afternoon trek towards a forest waterfall.

Day 11

Today you wake up just across from Ternate off the coast of Halmahera, with the mighty peaks of Ternate and Tidore as your dawn backdrop, ready to head ashore to the village of Dodinga after breakfast. This is the very place where Alfred Russel Wallace was staying when, in a fit of malarial delirium, he came up with the idea for the mechanism for evolutionary theory. He promptly wrote to Charles Darwin when he recovered and set in motion the formalisation of the theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.

Dodinga is a pretty little riverside village with friendly people, colourful houses and the ruins of an old Portuguese fort, and its importance in the history of science cannot be understated. After spending some time with the villagers, sharing some fresh coconuts and enjoying their hospitality, you head back to the boat for lunch and then go off for an afternoon of snorkelling and relaxation.

Day 12

You reach the island of Ternate. This colourful city was the centre of the spice trade for several centuries, and the imprint of the Dutch and the Portuguese can still be seen. In fact, its warehouses are still filled with fragrant piles of clove and nutmeg. Nearby is the splendid 17th-century, pagoda-style royal mosque, and the Sultan’s Palace with its rich collection of heirlooms.

There’s a choice of forts to visit from the turbulent colonial era, such as the well-restored Fort Tolukko (Portuguese, 1540). Wallace rented a house on Ternate for three years and used it as his base for the exploration of the Moluccas. It was whilst living here, very soon after returning from Dodinga, that he posted his legendary ‘Letter from Ternate’ containing his independently conceived theory of natural selection to Darwin.

You visit the probable site of his house near Fort Oranje, before going back to the boat to say farewell to the ship’s naturalist, the captain and the crew.

Everyone tends to dress very casually, so choose clothes that are comfortable for walking/trekking and suitable for wearing on the boat.

Clothing

The tropical climate means you can safely leave all of your warm weather gear at home. Bring cool cotton t-shirts and shorts. We cruise during the dry season in each of the regions that we visit but rain is always a possibility so bring a lightweight waterproof jacket. It can sometimes be a bit windy on the boat and this will also help keep you warm. Likewise, a lightweight fleece could be useful for pre-dawn trekking or if there is a cool wind on the boat – even if you don’t need it onboard, it will be useful for the plane.

We are respectful of the local cultures and customs – bring clothes that cover your shoulders and knees for village visits. Finally, you might want to bring at least one smart-casual outfit for sunset cocktails and evening meals on the boat.

Ladies: beach throw-overs, kaftans and sarongs are always useful; choose fabrics that dry easily. Also, bring a lightweight sundress or two – the boat offers a great setting for a photo shoot, live it up!

Sun Protection

You’ll be spending plenty of time out in the scorching tropical sun, so be sure to pack sunscreen with a high enough SPF to protect your skin from the sun’s damaging rays, which are stronger in the water, and some sun-protective clothing as well.

Cover-ups, sarongs, sun shirts, and other such clothing will ensure that you come back from your trip with just happy memories and photographs – and not sunburn. A good hat is essential; a wide-brimmed hat or cap will keep the strong equatorial sun off your face and neck. Sunglasses keep your eyes protected. A strap to hold your glasses can be a good idea for more active adventures. Just in case you fail to avoid getting sunburnt, bring an aloe-based lotion to soothe burned skin.

Footwear

Pack comfortable trainers, trekking sandals, sturdy walking shoes or hiking boots for hikes and walks. Bring socks to wear inside your walking shoes to avoid getting blisters. Many travellers appreciate the added stability of a walking stick or hiking pole; lightweight telescopic poles are easy to pack. You might also want waterproof sandals or reef shoes for wet landings and water activities. Flip-flops are great for the beach but it is standard practice to go barefoot on the boat.

Bags

A day backpack is essential on day hikes to carry things such as your water bottle, camera, binoculars, and rain jacket. We will provide you with a metal water bottle, which can be refilled as often as required. A waterproof wet/dry bag is a good idea for gadgets like your phone or camera.

Swimwear

Don’t forget your swimsuit/bikini/shorts/trunks/Speedos —and preferably more than just one swimsuit, so that one or two can be drying while you are wearing another. Luckily, swimsuits and/or swim trunks don’t take up too much space in your luggage. The water is warm but a rash guard (or a wetsuit) will protect you from the sun, abrasions and stings.

Skin and Hair Protection

Ladies, it’s important that you take good care of your skin and hair. The sun, seawater and salty air may be beautiful to experience but it can be tough on your body and will wreak havoc on your locks. Bring moisturising lotion to soothe skin parched by the sun and the saltwater; bring a leave-in conditioner to detangle your hair with ease because the water, mask, and hair ties will leave it in knots. Also consider bringing a scarf or headband to hold back unruly hair, or hair ties/pins to keep your hair off your face and therefore prevent water seeping into your mask.

Note: Your cabin is outfitted with towels, shampoo, conditioner and body wash.

Camera Equipment

If you are a photo enthusiast bring all of the camera and video equipment that you will use as you can expect exceptional opportunities for photography. If you prefer the ease of a point & shoot, bring that. If you want to take underwater photos you might want to invest in a waterproof camera or waterproof housing to capture photos of the incredible marine life.

It’s a good idea to bring a spare memory card; our cruises explore remote regions where memory cards cannot be purchased.

Electronics

The voltage on board is 220 volts. There are several electric sockets and USB charging ports in each cabin suitable for European-type plugs, but we do have a selection of adaptors for non-European-type plugs. Additional sockets are located in the saloon, where we have a dedicated area for the charging of electronic devices and cameras.

Miscellaneous Items

Snorkels, masks & fins in all sizes are provided onboard. If you are an avid snorkeller, you may prefer to bring your own mask & snorkel. If you’re new to snorkelling, you might want to consider purchasing a full-face snorkel mask to bring with you, it’s an easier option for beginners.

Even if you think that your stomach is rock-solid, a squall could turn up and make you feel sick. Sea-sickness tablets are provided on board but you may have a preferred brand, in which case bring your own.

You’ll find reference books and paperback novels on board. However, books of your choice or an e-reader will come in handy for down hours.

There is a comprehensive wilderness first aid kit on board but remember to bring any personal medications.

Essential items should be packed in your carry-on luggage. Medications, corrective lenses, spare underwear, cameras and documents should not be checked in case your bag does not arrive with you.