About Manta Mae
The first thing I noticed wasn’t the view, but the quiet hum of the engine as dawn light seeped through the porthole at 05:45. I was in my cabin on Manta Mae, already moving through the glassy water between Gam and Wayag. The air smelled faintly of salt and polished wood. By the time I stepped onto the upper deck, the sky had turned apricot, and the first outrigger canoe from a nearby village was cutting across the bay, heading home with the night’s catch.
We started diving at Cape Kri just after breakfast. The descent felt like falling into a fish tornado – blue fusiliers, batfish, emperor snappers swirling in thick clouds around the wall. My dive guide, Pak Wayan, tapped my shoulder at 22 metres and pointed: a pair of wobbegong sharks tucked under a coral ledge, perfectly still. At Melissa’s Garden later that day, we saw a blue-ringed octopus no bigger than a lemon, pulsing its warning colours as it crawled across a dead coral slab. The boat’s dive deck had everything laid out – fins, BCDs, tanks already filled and labelled with our names.
Manta Mae isn’t built like the mass-market phinisi. It’s 30 metres long, but with only seven cabins, the space feels generous. We spent our surface intervals on the upper deck lounge, drinking fresh coconut water served with a slice of lime. Lunch was grilled mahi-mahi with jackfruit salad, eaten under the shade of the awning. One afternoon, we kayaked into a narrow channel near Arborek Jetty, where the water was so still we could see every sea star on the bottom. The crew had left us alone for 20 minutes, just paddling quietly as reef sharks darted between coral heads.
On the third morning, we anchored near Sagof Passage. The current was strong, so we did a drift dive along a sloping reef where pygmy seahorses clung to sea fans. Back on board, the crew had set up a rinse station with fresh water hoses and a shaded area for gear. I dropped my camera housing on the deck and one of the deckhands quietly handed me a dry towel before I’d even bent down. That night, we had dinner on the aft deck – spiced coconut soup, grilled reef fish, and a chocolate cake that someone had baked in the galley’s single oven.
The last dive was at Mioskon, a tiny islet where the reef rises almost to the surface. We saw a pair of sweetlips doing their morning patrol, and a green turtle nibbling seagrass near the mooring line. As we surfaced, the boat was already alongside, crew holding out water bottles and towels. We pulled ourselves up the ladder, and someone handed me a cold towel with a slice of lime tucked inside. Manta Mae wasn’t flashy, but it ran like clockwork – every detail covered, nothing overpromised.
