On most yachts someone draws the smaller cabin. On Si Datu Bua no one does. She was built for the far routes, taken privately.
There is a kind of trip that only works on a small boat. A honeymoon in the Banda Sea. Two couples who have travelled together for twenty years. A family with young children who want the whole yacht, the whole crew and the whole horizon to themselves for a week. For these trips, the size of the boat matters less than the shape of it.
Si Datu Bua has three cabins. That is the point of her.
Three Equal Suites
Her suites are named for the old spice route: Banda, Toraja and Celebes. Each has a king bed and its own bathroom, with bathing set into carved teak panels and antique accents, and each is furnished in the colors, textures and motifs of the trade that once ran from the Celebes to the Banda Islands.
Banda is the largest, at about 6.8 by 5.6 meters. Toraja sits midships, where a naval architect puts the cabin that moves least, and it is the steadiest place aboard at sea. Celebes completes the three. No one draws the lesser cabin, because there isn't one.
She sleeps up to eight, which makes room for children alongside their parents, but she is at her best with six, or with two.
One of three suites, none of them lesser.
Bathing set into carved teak.
Fifteen to Look After You
Fifteen crew look after her guests: a captain who knows the far routes, cruise directors who plan the diving and the shore days together, a PADI instructor, and a galley that cooks for a table of six as if it were a table of one. With so few guests, service never pauses.
Three RIBs mean divers and snorkelers can go out at the same time, and no one waits on the deck for the tender to come back. Two compressors and a full dive shop serve every level, from first dives to deep drift dives.
Space for So Few
The common spaces are large for a boat of three cabins. The lounge and dining room can be closed against the midday heat or opened fully to the sea. In the evening the foredeck is cleared for dinner, and guests eat under stars uninterrupted by any light from land.
She is small enough to reach harbors that larger yachts cannot, and large enough to make the long crossings with ease. Her routes run from Papua and the Spice Islands to the Forgotten Islands, and beyond Indonesia to Thailand, Myanmar and the Andaman Islands.
A beach with no one else on it.
A Week, Alone
The Telegraph sent a writer and friends to join her for four nights in the waters around Flores. A week in the Banda Sea might look like this. The crossing under her red sails. A dive at Nusa Laut on slack tide from one of the three RIBs. An afternoon on a beach with no one else on it. Dinner on the foredeck under the Milky Way. For a longer journey, a voyage can end with a stay in the family's restored Toraja clan house, 164 years old, on the slopes of Gunung Sesean.
Si Datu Bua's crew aloft under red sails.
For a couple, it is the most private way we know to see the far east of Indonesia. For a family, it is a week in which the whole world shrinks to the people you love and a crew who know exactly what they are doing.
Si Datu Bua is available for private charter through Indo Yachts. Her yacht page has her suites, seasons and itineraries.
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