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Before a boat goes on the list

How We Pick Vessels

Nine of the boats we sail are ours. The rest are chartered from partners — and the difference should be invisible to you, which only works if the checks are identical.

Ask About a Vessel See the safety papers
Malca, a phinisi of the fleet, under way at sunset

In short

A vessel goes on our list only after its statutory papers are confirmed current, its life-saving and navigation equipment is counted against passenger numbers, and its captain and crew certification is checked for the class of boat — and it stays on the list only while guest feedback says it should.

  • Papers first, photographs second. A beautiful boat with lapsed paperwork is not a boat we sell.
  • The same checks on a partner vessel as on one of our own nine.
  • A sailing approval is issued per departure, so compliance is checked again every trip.
  • We do not publish a score out of 100, and the section below says why.
Ayvara, a deluxe phinisi of the fleet, at anchor at sunset

The process

Four checks, in this order

The order matters. Each stage can end the conversation, and the cheapest one to fail is the first.

  1. Statutory papers

    KSOP harbour-authority approval, the Laik Laut passenger safety certificate, the Non-Convention tonnage certificate under Ministry of Transport Regulation 65/2009, the pollution prevention certificate, current safety-equipment certification and passenger insurance. Six documents. All current, or the conversation stops here.

  2. Equipment, counted

    Life jackets against maximum passenger numbers rather than against the brochure. Raft capacity, buoy placement, extinguishers. Then the navigation and communication fit — chartplotter, radar, VHF, and satellite or long-range comms for the stretches with no mobile signal, plus AIS so other traffic can see you.

  3. Who is driving

    Deck-officer certification appropriate to the vessel class — for a phinisi of this size that is typically an Ahli Nautika Tingkat III licence or above — plus engineer certification, and crew trained in the emergency procedures the regulation requires. On dive-capable boats, current dive-professional certification and working oxygen.

  4. What guests say afterwards

    The first three checks get a boat onto the list. This one keeps it there. The recurring complaint we act on fastest is a vessel that does not match its photographs, because that is the one failure a guest cannot discover until they are standing on it.

A Surat Persetujuan Berlayar — the harbour master's sailing approval — is issued before every single departure, so the first check is effectively repeated on the morning of your trip by someone who does not work for us.

What we look at

Six things that decide it

Weighted by judgement rather than by a published formula. Where a boat is strong on five and weak on one, the one usually wins.

Compliance

Binary, and first. Either the six papers are current or they are not. This is the only one of the six that cannot be traded off against the others, and it is the reason some well-known boats are not on our list.

Safety fit

Not just present but certified and sized to the boat's passenger capacity. A jacket for every berth is the floor, not the achievement.

Condition vs listing

Cabins, decks, bathrooms and air conditioning as they actually are against how they are photographed. A chronic problem in Labuan Bajo generally, and the fastest way onto our exclusion list.

Route judgement

Whether the captain plans around the tide and the ranger station's opening hour rather than around a printed schedule. This is the difference between seeing dragons at eight and seeing a tail under a stilt house at eleven.

The galley

Not whether the food is elaborate, but whether allergies, halal, vegetarian and a birthday cake are handled as routine. Provisioning happens in Labuan Bajo, so a galley that treats requirements as a surprise fails guests at sea.

Crew ratio for the format

Enough hands for the boat and the itinerary. We publish no target ratio, because the honest number depends on vessel size, guest count and whether anyone is diving.

Why there is no score out of 100 on this page

An earlier version of this page published a weighted rubric — vessel 40%, crew 30%, itinerary 20%, sustainability 10% — and then, further down the same page, a second and incompatible one that scored crew at 25% and added a culinary category worth 15%. Crew was both 30% and 25%. The percentages ran past 100.

We removed both rather than pick one, because a published rubric is a strong claim. It says a committee sits down with a scorecard and grades boats out of a hundred. We do not run that process, and inventing the arithmetic for it would be exactly the kind of decorative precision this site is trying to get rid of.

What is above is what actually happens: a hard compliance gate, then five judgements made by people who know the boats. It is less impressive on a page and considerably more true.

A phinisi under red sails passing the hills of Komodo National Park

Our own boat, or a partner's

The six statutory papers

One of our nine
Checked before every season
A vetted partner vessel
Checked before listing, and re-checked

Sailing approval per trip

One of our nine
Yes
A vetted partner vessel
Yes — same harbour authority

Who employs the crew

One of our nine
Us
A vetted partner vessel
The vessel owner

Who takes your booking

One of our nine
Us
A vetted partner vessel
Us — one invoice, one contract

Who answers if it goes wrong

One of our nine
Us
A vetted partner vessel
Us

Told to you at quotation

One of our nine
Yes, by name
A vetted partner vessel
Yes, by name

This compares our own two supply routes, not a named competitor. The row that matters is the last but one: a broker disappears behind WhatsApp when a trip goes wrong, and the whole point of a single contracting party is that we cannot.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will you tell me which boat I am on before I pay?
Yes, by name, in the written confirmation — along with whether it is one of our nine or a partner vessel. If an operator anywhere cannot show you a public, named listing for the exact boat you are booking, that is the moment to walk away.
Can I see the vessel's certificates?
Ask and we will send them for your specific boat: the KSOP approval and the Laik Laut passenger safety certificate are the two worth requesting by name. A legitimate operator produces both without friction.
What makes you drop a vessel?
Lapsed paperwork ends it immediately. Beyond that, the pattern that gets a boat removed fastest is repeated feedback that the vessel does not match its listing — because unlike food or an itinerary change, that is something a guest cannot check until they are aboard.
Do you get paid to feature certain boats?
No. Placement is not for sale and we do not accept payment for a recommendation. What we do earn is a margin on the booking, which is the same whichever vessel you choose — that is why we will tell you when a cheaper format suits you better.
What qualification does the captain hold?
Deck-officer certification appropriate to the vessel class — for a phinisi of this size typically an Ahli Nautika Tingkat III licence or above, alongside engineer certification for the machinery. We will name the certificate held on your vessel rather than quote a fleet-wide average.
How often is any of this re-checked?
Statutory papers on their own renewal cycles, and a sailing approval before every single departure — that one is issued by the harbour master, not by us. Guest feedback is continuous, and it is the input that actually changes what we sell.

The rest of the record

Ask us to name the boat

Send your dates and group size. We will come back with the vessel by name, say whether it is ours or a partner's, and attach its certification if you want to read it before you commit.

Ask About a Vessel

+62 811-3823-875

sales@komodoluxury.com