The first half of the liveaboard gave us a Padar sunrise, four Komodo dragons and manta rays. The second half — the long haul from Komodo across to Lombok — turned out to be just as packed: a genuinely rough night at sea, jumping off the boat, two enormous whale sharks on Noah's birthday, a pod of wild dolphins, and a small tropical island to stretch our legs on. This was the stretch where the trip stopped feeling like transport and started feeling like the best part.
A long crossing and a rough night at sea
After Manta Point we began the long crossing away from the Komodo area toward Sumbawa and, eventually, Lombok. We sailed through the evening, the entire night and into part of the next day — the longest uninterrupted stretch of the whole trip. The wind had built and conditions turned noticeably rougher. Even getting from the little tender back onto the Alfathran III was tricky, the small boat heaving in the swell and banging against the hull.
The crew served dinner early — the guide had warned it would only get worse — and, happily, by now the food had improved a great deal from that grim first night. Once we hit properly open water the boat rolled hard. Line, Noah and Vitus all took seasickness tablets, and instead of going straight to bed we sat low and central where there's least movement, reading and waiting for the medicine to kick in. We turned in around 9:30pm; Line woke in the night when it got rough again and took another tablet. The tablets did their job: despite all the rolling, nobody in the family was sick. By the next day we were back into calmer, more sheltered water.
Quieter days — snorkelling, and jumping off the boat
After the intensity of the first half and that long crossing, the next couple of days were deliberately slow: long stretches of sailing, relaxing, and just being together on deck. At one stop we could jump straight off the Alfathran III into the sea, and because the boat has several decks at different heights, this became an event in itself. Noah and Jesper especially worked their way through the various jumps while Line filmed and took photos.
We snorkelled in the same area — a nice reef, if not as spectacular as some of the earlier ones. A later stop was windier, with more chop and current and a rumoured chance of reef sharks that never materialised. One reef was visibly damaged: Noah filmed an anchor lying directly on top of an anemone with clownfish still living in it, which was a genuinely depressing thing to see. And in a small piece of irony, this was the day we had remembered the underwater camera — but Noah hadn't secured the strap, so he didn't dare dive down holding it. You win some, you lose some.
Noah’s birthday — whale sharks before breakfast
On the 8th of July — Noah's birthday — we had yet another pre-dawn start for one of the biggest experiences of the whole journey. Up around 5:30am, in the water by roughly 6am, before it was properly light. Putting your face into near-black water in the half-dark is honestly a bit unnerving. We swam toward a fishing boat rigged with lights, and there, right beneath us, were two enormous whale sharks.
It was spectacular — and, for us, ethically complicated. The fishing boat was deliberately drawing the whale sharks in with fish scraps and waste, with water being sprayed down near them, making for a strange scene of these giant animals crowding a small boat. Looking around, it was clearly a system: other fishing boats dotted the wider area, some with one or two tourist boats hanging off them. We generally much prefer wildlife encounters where animals behave naturally and aren't fed for tourists, and this made us uncomfortable.
And yet — being completely honest — it was also less controlled than some wildlife tourism we've done elsewhere. At our spot it was mainly just our own boat group in the water, maybe 30 people (a lot of them Swedish), and the whale sharks themselves were entirely free: not enclosed, not restrained, able to leave whenever they wanted. We could snorkel right alongside them, dive above and below them. They were vast, calm and unbelievably beautiful. Despite our reservations about the feeding, parts of it were honestly better than our previous whale-shark trip in Western Australia, which had felt more industrialised and tightly controlled. Here, tourist-oriented as it obviously was, the animals at least seemed free to come and go. For Noah, it was an extraordinary way to start a birthday.
Dolphins on the long sail
Back aboard after the whale sharks, we had breakfast and settled in for another long sail — and this time the weather was gorgeous, with plenty of deck to spread out on. Then someone shouted that there were dolphins.
A pod of around six appeared alongside the boat and stayed with us for a good 20–25 minutes — running along the hull, crossing beneath us, breaking the surface in the bow wave right below where we were leaning over the rail. In the clear water you could see their whole bodies as they cut alongside. Because it was completely spontaneous rather than a scheduled stop, it felt like a proper gift.
A "Bounty island" stop — beach volleyball and a saltwater pool
Later that day, after more hours of sailing, we reached the day's main stop — and getting onto land was very welcome. It was a small, almost stereotypically perfect tropical island — the kind that turns up in the adverts. A big group got a beach volleyball game going under the palms, and Jesper, Noah and Vitus threw themselves into it for a solid hour and a half — shirtless, in the full afternoon sun, brutally hard work, and exactly the kind of physical release everyone needed after days sitting on a boat.
There was snorkelling straight off the beach, and afterwards we cooled down in a small seaside saltwater pool. Someone had brought a plastic thing you could throw a bit like a flying disc, so we messed about with that in the water until the light went. Volleyball, swimming, snorkelling and a sunset — a very relaxed, very social afternoon.
The last evening together
Back on board that evening — the last full night the whole group would spend together — the atmosphere had properly gelled. After days living cheek by jowl and a birthday to boot, everyone had loosened up: the kids and teenagers had spent hours playing Uno, chatting away in English and doing everything together, and the shared meals had become genuinely social, lively affairs, a world away from that quiet, wary first dinner.
That last night, Vitus, Line and Jesper eventually turned in while Noah — the only one of us who stayed up late with the older kids — carried on into the night, and then chose to sleep out on the roof deck rather than in the cabin. This social side of the trip had quietly become one of its biggest parts for him.
One last sunrise — three of us skipped it
The final morning had an optional very-early hike up another hill for sunrise, leaving around 5am. Vitus, Jesper and Line took one look at the accumulated sleep debt of the last few days and decided no sunrise was worth it. Noah went. When the three of us surfaced around 7am, Noah — up since five — reported that it had been nice, sure, but honestly much like plenty of other sunrises, and that he wasn't convinced the early start had been worth it. Which made the rest of us feel rather good about our decision.
Arrival in Lombok
After that last morning we sailed a couple more hours to the end of the boat journey in Lombok. We went ashore with all our luggage and carried on by road for an hour to an hour and a half, to a small town and a homestay. The liveaboard was over — but the next adventure was already looming: we'd come to Lombok to climb a volcano.
Looking back, this crossing packed an absurd amount into a few days. In roughly a week on the water we'd watched the sun rise over Padar, walked with Komodo dragons, swum with mantas and stingrays, jumped off the boat, crossed a rough open sea without anyone throwing up, played 90 minutes of volleyball in the blazing sun, swum with two huge whale sharks on Noah's birthday and watched dolphins play around the bow. But the thread running through all of it was the people: Noah and Vitus with a whole gang of kids their own age, endless Uno, English spoken all day, evenings spent together. It started with a disappointing dinner and a worry about what we'd signed up for — and turned into one of the richest parts of the entire trip.
Previously: ← Komodo National Park by boat — Padar sunrise, dragons & manta rays
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