Indonesia

Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world, made up of around 17,000 islands spread across 5,000 kilometres of ocean between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Of those, only about 6,000 have names, and only Java, Sumatra, Borneo (in part), Sulawesi and Bali are populated at any density. A yacht charter in Indonesia operates almost entirely outside those well-known islands, in two regions in particular: Komodo and Raja Ampat.

The Komodo region, around Flores in the east, is the only place in the world where Komodo dragons live in the wild, and the broader marine national park there has some of the most dramatic dive sites in southeast Asia: the manta cleaning stations at Mawan, the famous pink beach on Komodo Island, and the lookout on Padar where the three crescent bays line up for the photograph. Raja Ampat, off the western tip of West Papua, is widely accepted by marine biologists as the most biodiverse marine ecosystem on Earth, with around 1,500 small islands rising out of the water as karst limestone cones, and reefs that hold a large share of the world's known coral species.

Most Indonesia charters use a phinisi, the traditional two-masted wooden yacht built by the Bugis people of South Sulawesi for centuries of regional trade and now adapted as a luxury charter platform. Phinisis are slow but spacious, and they suit the Indonesian charter pattern of long crossings and unhurried evenings. The Komodo charter season runs April to October, while Raja Ampat is best from October to April, which is why the better phinisi fleets reposition between the two regions in the spring and autumn.