Sea Familia began as one phinisi, sailed by one family, on one stretch of Indonesian coast. A decade and three vessels later, we still answer our own messages.
Before the name, before the website, before the phone with the +62, there was a hull in a yard in Sulawesi and a family wondering whether to put a deck on it. They did. They sailed it east. They sold trips to friends, then to friends of friends, then to strangers who became regulars.
Sea Familia I is still that boat. The wood has weathered; the rigging has been replaced twice; the paint is whatever the boatyard had in stock that month. The smile at the gangway is the same one that waved from the first trip in 2018.
What changed is everything around it. A second boat in 2019. A dive academy in 2020, when diving stopped being a side activity and became the reason people came. A third hull, Sea Familia II, joined the fleet in 2021 — longer, deeper, built for the liveaboard programs that were filling up the calendar.
Sea Familia III is in the yard now. We’ll tell you when she’s ready.
Anyone can write a list of values on a website. These three are the ones we keep coming back to when the day goes sideways.
Crews that have sailed together for years make boats that feel calm. Ours have. Captains who have logged thousands of miles in Komodo know the water the way a baker knows the oven. We hire for that, and we keep them.
We don’t set the itinerary before we set off. Tides, currents, the wind, the captain’s read of the water — these decide where the boat goes. Guests come for Komodo and leave knowing about a bay they’d never have heard of.
Twelve guests is a lot of people in a salon. Sixteen is too many on a dive deck. We cap each vessel where the captain says it still feels right — and we don’t add bunks to chase a margin.
Twenty-five metres of ulin and teak, built in a small South Sulawesi yard. Twelve guests, six cabins, a Mitsubishi that’s still running today.
The itinerary finds its shape — three nights south, two nights north, one night anchored in the middle of the park. The shape has barely changed.
NAUI affiliation. Pool work in Labuan Bajo, course dives on the boat. The Academy becomes the second reason people book — and the second crew we hire for.
Thirty-six metres. Sixteen guests. Built for the longer trips that the Academy now demands, and for groups who want the whole boat to themselves.
Itineraries expand: Banda Neira for the spice islands, Raja Ampat for the bird’s-wings. The boats go further; the kitchen comes with them.
The next hull is on the slipway. The first bungalows are being planned. Same family, same harbour, same phone answered the same way.
Pick a vessel, pick a destination, pick a week. We’ll handle the rest of it.
