Trip Report Raja Ampat 10-Night Indo-Siren Liveaboard Dec. 2 – 12, 2022 Trip Report

[drrich2]

Raja Ampat had a lot that looked like our Caribbean life back home (they had sergeant majors, for crying out loud!). They had fish that looked like scrawled filefish, soldierfish (like our black-barred in Bonaire; Alexa said they have many kinds of soldierfish), and what look so much like the sand divers I see in Bonaire (even in pairs!).​

And many things looked similar, but more ornate. Sweet lips reminded me of yellow snapper. There were a range of small 'grouper-type' fish that resembled graysbys and coney's, up through medium-sized grouper.​

 

[drrich2]

Typical Dive Entry/Exit Process:

The Indo-Siren normally has 2 dinghies that look like this.​

One had trouble and was getting services; they rented this larger one with a cover, but people didn't like it as well. We had to watch our heads when back rolling off, and it was more awkward to climb back onto.​

Put your integrated weight pouches in your BCD and fins on en-route by dinghy to the site. The group heads out in a dinghy with a guide, who leans over the side sticking his/her head in the water (Stefan jumped in) to observe current conditions, often with a goal of entering where the current ‘splits,’ so the final dive plan isn’t in place till the guide’s head is in the water. Diving is often near a small to medium island. Then dinghy staff set your BCD up on the side of the dinghy, and you get in it. This is harder to do on a dinghy than on the ‘mother ship’ of a mainstream Caribbean liveaboard.

Back roll in. We didn’t do negative entries, but often went down pretty shortly.

Over course of dive, I signaled guide when I had a half-tank and again around 700 PSI. Early in the trip staff discussed buddy diving like it was an expectation; the in-water reality was people dove with the group and buddied closely if they wanted to, or not, or so was my impression. I stick to guides closely. Early on guidance suggested if someone ran low on air before others they could send the buddy pair on up; in practice after confirming I was cool with it, they let me go up alone (often filling and shooting my SMB for me, though I did it myself a bit (and learned it can rip a spool out of my hand!).

A fellow diver called this Barramundi Taco. These guys are paranoid and jittery, but this one thought he was hidden, till I got close.​

The exit was similar to my Galapagos trip; a dinghy motors over close by, I fin over and grab a ‘ski rope’ type line on the side of the boat, hand up my camera, remove my integrated weight pockets (carefully; when they come out it can nearly rip them out of my hand) to hand up, get out of my BP/W and they pull that up (note: some staff have well-developed arm muscles), hand up my fins, then climb out the ladder. Often they’d shuttle me back to drop off on the boat, then go back for others. There were 2 dinghies (one a rental since another was getting serviced).

 

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Typical Dive Conditions:

Note: All 16 guests chose to dive nitrox. A staff person analyzed in our presence and we logged it. The % mix was a very consistent 31% the big majority of the time.

The full moon came during our trip which tends to intensify currents.

Surface conditions averaged about as flat as the ocean gets. I recall one dive with what I consider mild swells.

Underwater, I’d say viz. was usually around 50 feet, 30 (or a bit less) on some dives, with at times a ‘milky/murky’ quality in a minority of dives. The 2 dives seeking mantas were both lower viz. dives. Temp.s were so warm I could’ve dove with just a rash guard. Per my VT3 computer, minimum temp.s varied from 75 – 84 degrees (note: Most were in the 80’s, and I don’t think any dive was mostly 75 degrees!).

My max. depths ran from 49.48 to 113.32 feet (very briefly; my next deepest was 80.81 feet), my average depths from 29.73 – 54.67 feet, with most dives max. depths clustering very roughly around 50 – 80 feet.

It’s hard to quantify current. We varied from no-current diving, to mild current drift diving, to fighting mild to moderate current (which could happen on the same dive). Reef hooks (the boat had some, and the guide can have you grab his) were used a few times, but not much. I did not have trouble with surface current rapidly shunting me around.

We dove everything from over flat, hard bottom to sloping walls and strongly vertical walls, and knelt on sandy bottom watching mantas. Reefs varied from lush and very diverse to lush and not diverse to rocky/spartan or a bit dead-looking, and fish density from some on up to ‘teeming with life.’

Reef hook use.​

Those beautiful photos with a mix of colorful corals and huge hard corals you see on ScubaBoard don’t lie, but the entire reef doesn’t look like that.

Note that while this is a lush scene, the sea floor to the bottom and left is more barren-looking.​

How you dive impacts your experience of conditions. Guides point out some big stuff (e.g.: gray reef sharks, black-tip sharks, Napoleon wrasse, bumphead parrotfish, schools of jacks and barracuda), but they put a lot of time into finding macro subjects (e.g.: pygmy seahorses, nudibranchs, tiny shrimp and more), which they gesture for you to come see.

Blacktip reef shark.​

You know those pigmy sea horses are tiny, but just how tiny? Well, I'd stay that probe is about as big around as a pencil, if that big.​

We'd dive and the guide show me something like that weird lint in this anemone, and back on the boat Glenn would ask 'Did you see the hairy orangutan crab?' I'd be like 'Was that piece of lint in the anemone it?' I still don't know... Above center, to the right a little, it does seem to have eyes. But is it a crab?​

 

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Note: After trip’s end, Alexa e-mailed us a very nice document with our dates, dated dive site names/locations/descriptions and values or descriptors for viz. and current, marine life and all crew names (and positions).

Our Dive Schedule per the log our Cruise Director Alexa sent out (so the viz. and current listings are presumably hers; she guides Group 2). This provides an assessment of conditions by a seasoned guide, rather than me.

Dec. 3.

Mioskon - Dampier Strait. Viz. 20 meters, Current mild.

Chicken Reef - Dampier Strait. Viz. 12 meters, Current medium to mild.

Cape Kri Dampier Strait. Viz. 20 meters, Current mild.

Tapokren - Dampier Strait. Viz. Night – 10 meters, Current none.

Dec. 4.

Sawandarek Jetty - Dampier Strait. Viz. 20 meters, Current none.

Manta Sandy - Dampier Strait. Viz. 15 meters, Current mild.

All mantas we saw were reef mantas, the all black kind.​

Citrus Ridge - Yanggeffo. Viz. 15 meters, Current mild to medium.

Mangrove Ridge - Yanggeffo. Viz. 15 meters, Current none to mild.

This is what it's like when the guide finds a macro subject. There's the tiny thing to try to get a focus on.​

Dec. 5.

Mayhem – Yanggeffo. Viz. 20 meters, Current mild.

Melissa’s Garden – Penemu. Viz. 15 meters, Current medium to strong.

Penemu Channel / Harto’s Reef – Penemu. Viz. 20 meters, Current mild.

Galaxy – Penemu. Viz. Night - 10 meters, Current mild.


Dec. 6.

Barracuda – Penemu. Viz. 20 meters, Current strong.

Anita’s Garden – Penemu. Viz. 20 meters, Current mild.

Manta Dayang – Batanta. Current 4 – 10 meters, Current medium to mild.


Dec. 7.

Two Trees – Sagof. Viz. 8 meters, Current medium to mild.

Andiomo – Daram. Viz. 10 meters, Current medium.

Warna Berwarna – Daram. Viz. 10 meters, Current small.


Dec. 8.

Four Kings – Wayil. Viz. 15 meters, Current mild.

Wedding Cake – Wayil. Viz. 15 meters, Current small.

Named for the stacked/layered look.​

Nudi Rock – Fiabacet. Viz. 10 meters, Current medium to strong.

Named because the nearby island looks like a snail, not because it's especially great for nudibranchs.​

Café De’ Break – Faibacet. Viz. 15 meters, Current mild.


Dec. 9.

Tank Rock – Fiabacet. Viz. 15 – 20 meters, Current medium.

Shadow Reef (Karang Bayangan) – Warakaraket). Viz. 15 meters, Current medium.

Boo Window – Boo. Viz. 15 meters, Current mild to medium.


Dec. 10.

Yilliet Kecil – Yilliet. Viz. 15 meters, Current mild.

Romeo – Yilliet. Viz. 15 meters, Current mild to medium.

Yilliet Kecil – Yilliet. Viz. 15 meters, Current mild.

Yilliet Besar – Yilliet. Viz. Night - 10 meters, Current none.


Dec. 11.

Yillet Timur – Yillet. Viz. 20 meters, Current mild.

Yilliet Kecil – Yilliet. Viz. 15 meters, Current mild.

 

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IX.) What Was The Indo-Siren Liveaboard Like?

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• Phinisi Boat – it’s wooden and creaks a bit off and on at night. When they tried to take us up north (which didn’t work out due to rough seas), it creaked a lot part of that night, and I could feel the boat rock side-to-side some. For the most part it was stable and comfortable and the creaking at night wasn’t bad.
• Rooms – Granted I’m told rooms 7 (mine with a roommate) and 8 are a little bigger, but compared to Caribbean liveaboards, I quipped we could’ve played frisbee in there. Nice! You don’t get under-the-bed storage, but there’s sort of a dresser and overhead cabinets for plenty of storage (plus the main salon has a little drawer and a big drawer for you near the charging station, handy to stow a shirt to put on for meals between dives), and you get a drawer at your dive deck station. You get a safe.
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• I’m told Rooms 7 & 8 are adjacent to the engine and water maker, which may’ve been a factor in our nighttime A.C. not being quite cool enough (yeah, I’m big, chunky and like it chilly, but my roommate was small and a healthy weight, and he agreed). I slept on top the covers without a shirt (not normal for me) and adjusted okay. Our bathroom was roomy but quite warm and a bit muggy. There was plenty of space between the toilet and shower, more than I can say for some Caribbean liveaboards.
• Food – Good and varied, but take note: the Cruise Director has pressed the chef to not make the food spicy (though spicy stuff you can add in is often made available). Some of us like spicy food and Indonesian food has a rep. for being spicy, so what’s the deal? Some people can’t handle spicy (we had a diver like that and she’d tell you herself). On a liveaboard, people can’t go elsewhere. The food was basic breakfast pre-diving, full breakfast after the 1st dive (with made-to-order eggs and omelets available, and often fried noodles and beef sausages (weenies) and bacon), lunch, dinner and snacks; everything but the snacks and deserts were buffet style at the outdoor (but covered) area right outside the salon, where we ate and had dive briefings (it was also a hangout place on the boat). A refrigerator offered varied juices (I drank a lot of mango and orange juices), milk, Coke (but no Coke Zero, Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi equivalents – Alexa told me those are nearly impossible to get in Sorong) and other things. I don’t drink alcohol; some was available but I don’t know what or what was an added charge (there was an ‘honor system’ list to report what alcohol for a fee drinks you took).
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• Salon and outside dining area – The salon was nice, but the floor raised so the ceiling was low (yes, I hit my head on it once). Due to the door to the briefing area, it didn’t stay fully air-conditioned all the time, but was comfortable. The outdoor briefing/dining/hangout area outside the salon was surprisingly comfortable, given the lack of A.C. and Raja’s equatorial location. It occasionally got a bit warm and muggy, but was comfortable for the most part.
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• Dive deck – Interesting layout. Toward the front of the boat (bow) imagine a giant capital letter ‘U,’ with the curve at the front, and the two ‘arms’ reaching around the sides. Your dive station with tank and drawer are along the arms of the U, facing outward at the ocean (convenient since you’ll be stepping down into a dinghy on one side). The interior of the U is where dive staff operate, analyzing nitrox while you observe and log it, storing plastic crates with fins for the dinghies, moving the fill whips to refill tanks, etc…
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• The only clear downside is the path around our spaces was a bit narrow, so we often had to lean to let people pass through. No big deal.
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• Top deck with loungers – I spent almost no time here. It was a bit small; there was a sun cover crew could put up if the wind wasn’t bad. No hot tub. I’m told there was a hammock or two somewhere on the boat.
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• Alternative recreation – they had kayaks. One afternoon they took us for a beach break (at Yillet Beach) in the dinghies, and another day they book us to an observation point (Piaynemo Viewpoint) for a beautiful view (and photos).
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• Staff Interaction – our Cruise Director Alexa was the major engager and communicator, doing most dive briefings, guiding for Group 2 (there are 4 groups; we rotated every few days, so on a 10-night trip I was in 3 different groups), providing briefings on a range of topics (e.g.: orientation, safety, next day’s plan, assessing guest satisfaction and quickly addressing problems, answering questions and explaining why things worked as they did. In a nutshell, she was great. I hope Master Liveaboard Fleet keeps her, because she was so integral to our experience I can hardly imagine the trip without her. Late in the trip when engine trouble stranded us, she kept us informed, maintained guest morale, accompanied us by speedboat back to Sorong, arranged dinner at Swiss-Belhotel at no charge and had us taken to the airport the next day for our flights. A better ‘mother hen’ I couldn’t have asked for. Note: Alexa told us groups are 4, but they could make it 5 for people traveling together. Here were the groups our trip:
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• Of the guides, Stefan was a standout with a friendly, upbeat, positive personality and a knack for offering constructive feedback in an encouraging way…and he’s really good at finding things. Manif also did a fine job; I didn’t work with the other guide but never heard anything negative.
• Fellow Guests – There were 16 crew and 16 of us. Of us, 9 were a group of French divers and the rest a near even split between Americans and Canadians. Some of the French weren’t fluent in English. People were generally friendly and interesting. Those I could understand appeared to have substantial experience in dive destinations more exotic than the Caribbean (e.g.: Socorro, Galapagos, Komodo, Alor, etc…), and at 53 I think I was in the younger half age-wise. I felt a bit like a newbie.
• Internet/Communications - In the Dampier Strait region (but not Misool) we often had limited Internet in the salon and outdoor dining area, with the directive “Please turn off auto updates and photo sync, etc… Our internet speed and quota is limited here.” I don’t know how much renting or buying a local Internet-enabled SIM card for your phone would add that that. The boat has a satellite phone and can be contacted in emergencies. I was glad to clear a bunch of e-mails rather than let 10-days’ worth pile up for trip’s end.
• Late Luggage – I was told the French group arrived in Sorong the day they boarded rather than at least a day early (not recommended!), and their luggage…did not. It was brought to the Indo-Sirenlate the next day. I don’t know what all went into that or what it may’ve cost. They dove rental gear till they had their own.
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  Electric File Clam.​

 

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X.) Safety Matters​

In the wake of the Sept. 2019 MV Conception liveaboard fire killing 34 people in an enclosed bunk area, concerns about liveaboard safety are on the minds of many divers, especially traveling outside the U.S. where we’re unfamiliar with foreign requirements. I was impressed with the Indo-Siren’sconduct.

We had a safety drill and muster drill our first day. We were shown where the life jackets were in the rooms, our passports were collected and stored in a way they’d be safe and with our group if we had to abandon the sinking boat, and we were shown the alternative exit strategy from our rooms below deck. It works like this:

• There were 8 rooms; my roommate and I were in room 7.
• Rooms 7 and 8 don’t have a ladder and ceiling exit hatch, but the other guest rooms do, the doors don’t have locks, so in a crisis we could enter another room.
• We were shown the ladder and invited to place and climb it and push up the ceiling exit hatch, which I did. Another guest said the hatches open to the dive deck at the front of the boat (I didn’t stick my head up through it and look around).

During the week the crew had 2 drills, one a fire drill, that guests weren’t required to be involved in.

I didn’t ask about a roving watch, but there were 16 crew on the boat, and I noticed a white board listing slots for night watch and some other watches (e.g.: engine watch). I didn’t prowl around at 2 a.m. checking for staff observers.

They provided quite a number of electrical outlets in the main salon, and told us we could charge devices in our rooms while we were in them, but not to use extension cables, which were considered a fire hazard.

 

[cozcharlie]

Thank you for the detailed report. I know you did a lot of homework. I (and I am sure many others ) will appreciate your sharing your experiences for future travelers.

FYI: I actually was able to get money from multiple ATMs at Jakarta airport. I was rejected by the first one(didn’t seem to work for anyone) but had no problems at second two. I was just using a plain old ATM card , not a debit card.

 

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XI.) How Well Did Our Cruise Director And Master Liveaboard Fleet Handle Engine Failure?​

It’s a measure of a dive services provider how well they handle things when they go bad. Late in our trip, the next to last dive day, a big hole in the engine left us with power but unable to move the boat. We were told there was a spare engine, but it couldn’t steer (I have no idea how that works). Our Cruise Director Alexa did an excellent job at keeping us informed and updated, and looking for ways to make things up to us. Here’s how it went:

1.) Rental fees were waived, including for my big tank (so I saved $45).

2.) A dive was added that day, and we still did 2 the morning of the last dive day (so we gained a dive, doing 31 rather than 30). Yes, we repeated some sites instead of hitting distant new sites en-route back, but that last dive rocked (e.g.: 2 black-tip sharks, 2 Napoleon wrasse, 2 kinds of Jack, some ‘snapper-looking’ fish and a paranoid barramundi all out close to me in a short time…it’s like they heard I was going to write a bad review or something. Crazy). We were allowed to use rental gear at no charge that last morning so our regular gear could dry out.

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  3.) The next day an enclosed ‘bus like’ speed boat arrived to take us back to Sorong (Alexa and some crew went with us). We were taken to and put up at no charge at the Swiss-Belhotel (except a couple with extended stay at another, who got put there), had free dinner at SBH that night, were taken to the Sorong airport the next day and given the metal water bottles we’d been using with the Indo-Siren logo on them.
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4.) Also the next day, a fishing boat arrived to tow the Indo-Siren back to Sorong, estimated to take about a day (another diver somehow heard at an estimated cost of $6,000), and a new engine was on the way from Makassar. At least the trip after ours would be cancelled; what about the one after that?

From my perspective, Alexa and Master Liveaboard Fleet did a fine job for us! Engine failure this late meant cancelling the following trip at a time some divers were probably already en-route on flights. Blue Water Dive Travel agent Tim Yeo told me they had a number of guests on the trip following mine, and he spent the whole weekend trying to rebook them on alternate boats. I don’t know what happened with and for those people.

 

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XII.) What Were the Hotels Like?​

The FM7 Resort Hotel in Jakarta and Swiss-Belhotel in Sorong are both very popular options for dive tourists headed to Raja Ampat, and I stayed at both. The FM7 Resort Hotel had a restaurant that was open way late (think I had dinner there around 1:30 a.m. – 2 a.m. one arrival), a small general store with various odds and ends (not open all night), facilities I didn’t use and a free shuttle to/from the airport. The toilet had a bum gun.

The Swiss-Belhotel had rooms a bit smaller (I think) but comfortable (I like firm beds), the toilets had a bidet function rather than a bum gun, the t.v. channel listing for foreign stations was wrong on every channel I tried (so you had to hunt what you wanted), and it had no shuttle service so you need a taxi to get to/from the airport unless your dive operator provides transportation (and taxi drivers have a rep. for not accepting U.S. dollars, though one of the throng at the airport agreed to take me to SBH for $20 U.S. (I think an upcharge, but after seeing the frightening traffic he navigated, I have no complaint). Trip Advisor reviews are very mixed on the SBH; very slow dining service is one lament, though ordering as an individual I found them timely for dinner. The group dinner was longer and less smooth – our Cruise Director mentioned they were disorganized and not well set up to handle large groups. I thought food cost, value for money and quality were quite reasonable.

Neither hotel has the small wash cloths we’re used to for bathing and washing dishes in the U.S. (neither did Indo-Siren). Both had a breakfast buffet option and a mini-fridge that wasn’t cold. Both had 2 plastic bottled waters in the room, and you can get water downstairs. Each had a safe, IIRC. You can get Coke Zero at the FM7 Resort Hotel, but our Cruise Director told me that and Diet Coke are almost impossible to find in Sorong, so I couldn’t find either (or Diet Pepsi) at the SBH.

FM7 Resort in Jakarta.

Swiss Belhotel in Sorong.