Eastern Indonesia, by Invitation

The far east of Indonesia is where the family has always sailed. Beyond Komodo the crowds fall away, and the map opens into the places Silolona was built for: the Banda Islands, the Forgotten Islands, the Togian Islands, Tanimbar and, at the end of every line on the chart, Papua. These are the waters the family specializes in, and the specialty is not navigation. It is welcome.

A Name from Tanimbar

The commitment is written into the boat herself. Silolona takes her name from a legend of the Tanimbar Islands, in which a man named Atuf builds a boat to sail to the sun in memory of his beloved wife, Silolona. Patti Seery did not choose a name from the places everyone already went. She chose one from the far southeast, from islands most charts treat as the edge.

Herage

Papua is where the relationships run deepest. In the early 1980s, newly arrived in the country, Patti began travelling into the tribal areas of what was then Irian Jaya, by small boat and by cargo schooner, and she kept going back. She came for the art, the carving of the Asmat on the southern coast and the culture of the Dani in the highland valleys, and she stayed for the people.

She did more than collect. She arranged for Asmat and Dani work to be exhibited in the United States, at a time when very few people outside Papua had seen it, and she helped with disaster relief when it was needed. In 1998, in thanks for both, the chief of the Dani formally inducted her into the tribe and gave her a local name: Herage. The relationships outlived her. Writers who sailed with the family after her death have described villagers recalling, with joy, their meetings with her.

Earning the Welcome

When Silolona began sailing in 2004, she carried those relationships with her. Today they make possible some of the most extraordinary arrivals in Indonesian travel: the yacht met by carved canoes, guests received in the village, the highlands opened a world away from the coast. None of this is staged, and none of it can be bought. It rests on decades of trust, and the family takes care not to spend it carelessly.

Tresno Seery, who now runs the company, describes the balance as delicate. Before guests visit a community, the team makes survey trips and speaks directly with village leaders about what they are comfortable sharing. The aim, he says, is that communities benefit in a positive, non-exploitative way. Many villages have remarkable traditional crafts, from weaving and woodcarving to handmade instruments, and when visitors genuinely value them, the younger generation has a reason to keep learning them. At its best, he says, responsible tourism helps sustain a culture instead of diluting it.

The Width of the East

The same patience runs across the rest of the eastern routes. In the Banda Islands the welcome can arrive as a kora kora, the old ceremonial war canoe, paddled out to meet the ship. In North Maluku, Patti's friendship with the Sultan of Ternate opens doors in the old spice sultanates. The Forgotten Islands, strung between Timor and Tanimbar, see almost nobody from one season to the next, and the Togian Islands of central Sulawesi sit so far from any airport that arriving by sea is the practical option before it is the romantic one. In the Toraja highlands the family restored a clan house, 164 years old, on the slopes of Gunung Sesean, where a voyage can end on land.

Tresno has said that travelling by boat remains, in his view, the least intrusive way to explore eastern Indonesia. A yacht arrives, is welcomed, and leaves no road behind it.

What Guests Take Home

Guests who have made these journeys rarely describe them as sightseeing. They describe being received. What they are received into is a long friendship, not a performance for visitors, begun by a woman who first came east as a guest herself and was, in time, given a name.

That friendship is Silolona's rarest feature. It is not on her spec sheet, and it is the reason some guests choose her above all else.

Silolona is available for private charter through Indo Yachts. Her yacht page has her suites, seasons and itineraries. For more on the peoples of Papua, read West Papua's Ancient Tribes in our Journal.