About Silolona Liveaboard
The first morning, I woke before sunrise to the soft slap of waves against the hull in Dampier Strait. I stepped barefoot onto the teak deck, wrapped in a thin cotton sarong from the cabin, and watched the sky shift from indigo to peach behind the jagged silhouette of Wayag. The air was cool, not humid yet, and the only sound was the distant cry of a Brahminy kite. Silolona, at 50 meters long, felt intimate — not massive, not cramped. Just enough space to find solitude, but never feel alone.
We started our diving at Cape Kri just after breakfast. The guide handed me a tablet with the dive plan — depth, time, currents — and I remember thinking how precise everything felt compared to the chaotic liveaboards I'd read about online. The reef wall dropped fast, and within minutes I was surrounded by fusiliers so dense they blotted out the sun. A giant trevally circled below. One of the crew had pointed out a wobbegong shark tucked under a ledge the day before, and sure enough, there it was, camouflaged like cracked coral. I surfaced grinning, my regulator still in my mouth, and the dive tender was already alongside, offering a bottle of chilled coconut water.
Back on deck, lunch was laid out under the shaded awning: grilled mahi-mahi, jackfruit salad, and sambal matah that had just enough heat to make me reach for another glass of iced lemongrass tea. The lounge area had deep cushions and a low table with Indonesian coffee table books — not the glossy brochures you get on budget boats, but real photography monographs on West Papua’s tribes. In the afternoon, we anchored near Sagewin Island. I took the kayak out just before golden hour. Paddling between the tiny islets, I startled a pair of buff-banded rails that scurried across the mangrove roots. The water was so clear I could see every pebble on the bottom.
On the second night, the crew set up a projector on the upper deck. We watched a 1970s documentary about coral spawning with blankets and warm milk spiked with local ginger. No Wi-Fi, no loud music, just the occasional crackle of the speaker and the soft murmur of guests whispering between scenes. The next morning, we did a final dive at Melissa’s Garden. The reef was a mosaic of soft corals — purple gorgonians, orange sea fans, pink whip corals swaying in the current. I surfaced to find Silolona Liveaboard had moved closer to a cluster of mushroom-shaped islets. We snorkelled from the dinghy, and I saw a pair of pygmy seahorses clinging to a sea fan no bigger than my palm.
By the time we returned to Sorong on the third afternoon, I’d stopped checking my watch. The rhythm of the boat — dive, eat, rest, repeat — had replaced the urgency I’d arrived with. One of the staff handed me a small woven bag with a bar of frangipani soap from the cabin as a parting gift. It wasn’t over-the-top luxury, but it felt considered. Real. I didn’t want to get off.
