17,000 Islands · Infinite Possibilities

Our Story

More than a decade chartering Indonesia's remote waters with travelers from around the world.

The Premise

Indonesia is home to some of the richest waters on Earth: reefs at the heart of the world's marine biodiversity, volcanic islands, and seafaring cultures unchanged for centuries.

Indo Yachts exists to help people have the trip of a lifetime in these waters, and to make sure they get the private charter experience they deserve. That is the foundation, and everything else we do is built around that one mission. This is the story of how it took shape.

Nikko Karki Founder, Indo Yachts

The First Expedition

In 2012 there was almost no reliable information on yacht charters in Indonesia. Planning a trip from overseas was nearly impossible. Even from Bali, where I was living, finding a boat to explore Komodo came down to word of mouth.

Then a Belgian explorer handed me a hand-written itinerary: a string of rarely visited islands, on a boat he had been fixing up himself. I googled the island names and found almost nothing. The idea of going somewhere the internet had not reached was irresistible.

So began a twelve-night journey that would cover more than a thousand kilometers at sea.

The view from that first expedition. Islands that hadn't been visited by outsiders in years.

Into the Unknown

We rented a dive compressor and bolted it to the deck. We loaded provisions and left.

We set foot on islands that had not seen outsiders in years. We were taken in as guests at a Buginese wedding. We dove with a congregation of some fifty mobula rays and lit bonfires on beaches with nobody around for miles. We met seafaring Bajau who had spent their whole lives on small wooden boats.

Something shifted during that trip. The seed was planted for what would eventually become Indo Yachts.

It was, until that point,
the adventure of our lives.

A Different Way to Travel

More trips followed: diving and hiking in Komodo, forgotten islands and atolls, rugged phinisis. I grew up in Finland in love with wooden sailing boats, and I had cruised the Baltic, the Med, and the Caribbean. Indonesia was something else entirely.

The boats blend into the landscape. There are no marinas or restaurants ashore. The days are spent exploring nature.

Those early trips made one thing clear: I wanted to share this with other people. It took three more years before the idea of a company took shape.

The boats blend into the landscapes, and the focus is on a sense of adventure with more freedom to roam.

Dunia Baru at anchor in Wayag, Raja Ampat

The Problem Nobody Had Solved

Booking any of it from the outside was another matter. Making an informed decision required personal relationships or standing on the deck yourself.

Travel agents had no local expertise. International brokers knew neither the waters nor the vessels. Yacht owners produced no marketing materials, and Indonesian law requires chartering locally registered yachts, which kept the whole market closed to outsiders.

A Komodo dive map with the classic sites flagged, made by Nikko around 2012

A map I made in the early days, around 2012, before there was an Indo Yachts.

Most boats ran dive trips and little else, and most sold cabins by the berth. Private charters existed here, but from the outside they were nearly impossible to reach. Making these journeys accessible was the mission from day one.

The Promise

I founded Indo Yachts in 2015 with two rules: never charter a boat for a client that we did not know ourselves, personally, and work only with the ones we felt confident could deliver a 10/10 private charter.

Those rules make us grow slowly, and they mean I can stand behind every charter. When you send people to sea, first-hand knowledge of the boat is a prerequisite, not an afterthought.

"Never charter a boat for a client that we did not know ourselves, personally."

The founding rule of Indo Yachts

10+

Years of Expertise

1 of 1

IYBA Members in Indonesia

17,000

Islands to Explore

The Boats and Crews That Earned It

Indo Yachts — The bow of Dunia Baru. Traditional design meets modern engineering.

The bow of Dunia Baru. Traditional design meets modern engineering.

The yachts we represent are mostly wooden sailing yachts: traditional phinisi design carrying modern systems, built from the hardwoods of the very islands they sail. Alongside them sail true expedition ships like Aqua Blu and Kudanil Explorer.

Each earned its place in the program the same way: we know her, and we recommend her with confidence. The standards, the owners, and the program behind her all stand up to scrutiny.

Each has its own character, suited to different groups and different ways of traveling.

Swimming alongside whale sharks in Cenderawasih Bay, the only known habitat of non-migratory whale sharks.

Trust & Reputation

Indo Yachts was built by seeking out the best yacht owners and crews in the region and developing relationships with them. It takes time, and it is worth it in the long run. We work with the region's best yachts only, as a choice, because it is the only way to make sure our private charters are trips of a lifetime over and over again.

A decade on, most of our business arrives by referral: clients returning year after year, owners referring their friends for us to handle the details, and the region's leading resorts trusting us with their most valued guests. A handful of the world's leading travel companies bring us their VIP clients as well.

In 2018 we became the first and only IYBA (International Yacht Brokers Association) member in Indonesia, holding ourselves to international standards while keeping the local expertise that makes the difference.

The work also reaches beyond Indonesia. As international brokers we have placed clients aboard Octopus, Savannah, Sea Eagle, Northern Escape, Galileo, Aqua Mare, Nalani and Hanse Explorer, among others.

Full-Service Experiences

Drawn for one client: ten nights, eleven anchorages, the best diving Raja Ampat has.

A decade of charters taught us what a journey really needs, and our role grew to match. We plan the whole Indonesian trip around the voyage now, from the first inquiry to the flight home.

The experience shows in the details. We negotiate terms on the client's behalf, knowing from years alongside the owners exactly where the room is. We draw routes the standard itineraries never reach, because we know the anchorages, the crossings and the crews who can make them. For the land half, we place guests in the villas and resorts we use ourselves.

Special events, expert-led excursions and private aviation sit inside the same plan. That is how a map like this one gets drawn: against a brief no brochure itinerary could answer.

Photographing whale sharks from the water. The pictures from mornings like this follow our guests home.

About

The company that grew from this vision

That first expedition became Indo Yachts: Indonesia's specialist charter practice, IYBA's first member in the country, and today a program that arranges charters across the world. The founding, the credentials, and the milestones live on the About page.

About Indo Yachts