Celestia

Celestia works Komodo out of Labuan Bajo on a four-night minimum. The park is the shortest and most predictable of her cruising grounds: Padar and Pink Beach early, Manta Point and Taka Makassar timed around slack water, Siaba Besar for the turtles, and the ranger trek on Komodo or Rinca. With a dive master and Nitrox on board the reef stops run deeper than most leisure charters manage, and the park entrance fee is already inside the charter rate.

From Sorong, Raja Ampat is the longer and more committing itinerary. Distances between anchorages are greater and the schedule is built around tide and light rather than a fixed route. Cape Kri, Arborek Jetty, Boo Windows, Magic Mountain and Mawan are the anchor points, with the karst viewpoints at Wayag and Piaynemo further north. Expect fewer stops per day than Komodo and more time in the water.

The Banda Sea crossing is seasonal and weather-dependent, joining Ambon or Maumere to the Spice Islands. Hatta Island, Nusa Laut, Manuk and Gunung Api are the draw, the last two for hammerheads and sea snakes respectively. These are open-water passages with long stretches between anchorages, and dates are set by the operator rather than the charterer.

Alor sits between Komodo and the Banda Sea and is usually sailed as part of a repositioning leg rather than as a destination in its own right. Cold upwellings make the diving sharper and less crowded than Komodo, and the villages along the strait are far less visited. Availability depends entirely on where Celestia is in her seasonal cycle.

Ambon is where Celestia joins and leaves her Spice Island itineraries, alongside Maumere, rather than a region she cruises in its own right. It is worth building a night into the trip for, because Ambon Bay is one of the best muck diving grounds in Indonesia and the sites sit within twenty minutes of the harbour.

The bay is black sand and low visibility, which sounds like a warning and is actually the point. Rhinopias, frogfish, mandarinfish and psychedelic frogfish are found here in densities that no reef in Raja Ampat can match, and with Nitrox and a compressor on board the long, shallow, slow dives that muck sites reward are easy to run back to back.

Ashore, Ambon carries the same colonial and spice-trade history as Banda but at city scale, with a working port and direct flights from Jakarta and Bali into Pattimura. For guests it is the practical end of the itinerary; for photographers it is often the best diving of the week.