The journey to the edge of the atlas began with four flights – London to Dubai, Dubai to Jakarta, Jakarta to Kupang, then a short hop to Alor in Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands, to a runway so sun-baked it looked borrowed from the sea.
Each leg smaller, hotter, more improbable, until it felt like we’d slid off the map entirely. From here, our group would sail west from Alor to Flores – a seven-day route with Silolona Sojourns and Cookson Adventures through some of the most remote, tourist-free stretches of Indonesia’s Ring of Fire.
At the dock, the air hummed with heat, water slapped against the stubby hulls of fishing boats. And then, Silolona: 50 metres of phinisi schooner in the Bugis tradition, all carved teak and patient joinery, dwarfing everything around her.
Forged out of obsession, she traces back to the 1980s, when Patti Seery – an American who fell hard for Indonesia – founded the archipelago’s first explorers’ club and championed the indigenous art of Papua’s Dani and Asmat peoples.
Entranced by the black sails of old cargo schooners, she set out to resurrect the tradition with Konjo boatbuilders – hand-joined, no nails – but rigged for modern voyagers, old-world craft spliced with seaworthiness and comfort.
Our hosts are Sarah and Tresno – Patti’s son, a naval architect whose precision feels wired into the ship itself. We step aboard to a low, resonant conch note rolling across the harbour. The dock’s swelter falls away, replaced by the smell of sun-warmed teak and salt. A cold towel, is pressed into my palms; ginger tea appears. At the helm, Goris wears sunglasses like a birthright. The crew, twice our number, operate with uncanny intuition – part mind-reader, part fixer, part accomplice.
My parents kept clinker-built boats on the Norfolk coast, where summers idled away messing about on the water. So before my bag’s even settled in the cabin, I’m already scampering around inspecting the rig, the sail plan, the shape of the hull. You don’t need to know much about sailing to see the mastery in every detail. Below deck, the interiors feel like a mariner’s scrapbook – shells and faded charts, dog-eared books of adventure, compasses and coral specimens arranged with the offhand grace of ephemera gathered over decades. On land, you might call it interior design. Here, it’s pieces of other lives folded gently into our own.
The days that follow unspool without schedule. I’m often up first, tugged from sleep by what’s outside. I pad barefoot to the foredeck at dawn, planks cool underfoot, listening to the water drum against the hull. The sky moves through a private spectrum – cool, bruised lilac fading to pewter, until a sudden punch of neon raspberry as the sun breaches a black-cut ridge.
Mornings start with a pre-breakfast paddleboard after cannonballing off the bow; afternoons with snorkelling, beach landings, or lazing in the shade, limbs slack and salted, too content to move – until the boat itself rouses us, the dive platform becoming our stage. Adnan, our instructor, whose calm feels like medicine, leads us into underwater gardens that unfurl with sea fans the size of parasols, parrotfish grazing, clownfish darting among anemone and neon fusiliers slicing through in electric arcs.
We topple backwards off the rib and fin out over a ledge so abrupt it’s as if we’re skydiving. One site drops from lip to abyss in a single step – my brain keeps waiting for the fall. It doesn’t come. Even if you never touch a tank, snorkelling here is no consolation prize; the coral sits shallow, alive with the same riot of colour as the depths.
We sail past slopes quilted in jungle and beaches with no name. Sand as pale as bone, jungle dark and tangled, curious eyes emerging between palms. We surf bow waves with whales and watch dolphins trail the ribs. At night, the sea goes inky navy, a vat of colour that swallows the anchor chain; 70 metres vanish into the void.
On our fourth morning, dawn tore itself open – the volcano blew at first light. We’d been laying out fishing lines near Lembata Island when the horizon boiled – ash punching skyward. Within minutes we were in ribs, throttles wide, spray stinging, surging towards a mountain announcing its own sunrise.
Goosebumps prickled up my arms as smoke twisted into thick grey coils streaked with molten orange that spat and flared. It’s Edmund Burke’s theory of the sublime made real: beauty tipping into terror, senses flooded, almost too much to bear. I don’t know whether to shriek with laughter or sob uncontrollably; it’s delirious, disorienting, dazzling and I’m drunk on it.
On land, welcomes are unapologetically joyful. We stumble into a house blessing: gongs, drums, song, offerings. They teach us to pound ceremonial bark cloth into softness; we pass rolled clove cigarettes; a mother beats a rug, laughter rising with the dust. Children dart past snoozing dogs and pecking chickens. That afternoon, an ikat-weaving community shows us dye coaxed from leaves and ash, patterns pulled from memory.
Three-month sarongs emerge from tiny loops of weavers’ fingers. Someone claps; the circle closes; we dance. I’m a clumsy interloper with a grin I can’t suppress. Fingers catch mine, tug me back when I fall out of step. It’s sticky, hot, euphoric. We stop only when our chests heave.
Menus shift daily. Lobster lacquered in sambal that pricks your scalp; pepes steamed in banana leaves; nasi uduk silky-sweet, sate charred to a proper edge. One night, without warning, the crew ferry us to a sandbar in the middle of the ocean, transformed into a dreamscape they’ve been quietly constructing all day.
The beach is littered with hundreds of candles in hand-dug hollows; palm-leaf birds, fish and insect figurines – twined in secret by the crew – sway overhead; sand sculptures of turtles and dolphins glow in the firelight. A pit smokes with the day’s catch, bright salads spread beside it, while the same hands that rig sails now strum guitars. We feast with our ankles in the tide then dance once again, the night spinning wider than we can hold.
Tender domesticities are as vivid as the big-ticket moments. Laundry comes back carrying the day’s sunlight and sharply folded. The bed is immaculately made, ilkat cushions propped just so. Each night brings a different gift on the pillow: an ancestral totem, a bronze dolphin, hand-tooled salad servers, a photo of the crew grinning from a coconut-shell frame. Whenever we return, those same faces are waiting on deck, waving and cheering us back aboard.
But it’s the quiet hours that are the most indelible. I sit with a book abandoned in my lap, watching fish scribe silver arcs. I lean on the rail and listen to rigging ticking, wood creaking, the vessel breathing around me. The sublime again, gentler this time: clouds drifting overhead, horizon empty, a shared look saying, you see this too, right?
Some trips you take. This one took me by ambush, unapologetic and absolute. It reminded me travel can still blindside you with discovery; there are still places the world hasn’t worn smooth. I’ll spend the rest of my life hunting another.
Cookson Adventures can organise a seven-night charter on Silolona from £109,284 based on 10 guests sharing and on Si Datu Bua from £70,156 based on six guests sharing. Cookson Adventures can offer bespoke itinerary planning,  an onboard media team, marine biologists, specialist guides and private internal flights. For clients looking to explore inland, there are opportunities to incorporate helicopter adventures and private mobile camps into an itinerary. Â
All image credits: Cookson Adventures with Silolona Sojourns
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