What we learned chartering Lamima for ten nights through Komodo.

Komodo in shoulder season, a chef who insisted on the fish market every morning, and why the third anchorage matters more than the first.

Ten nights is longer than most guests book, and longer than most need. But Lamima rewards the patient charter. The first two days are spent unlearning the itinerary; by the third anchorage, the trip finds its own rhythm.

The market before the manta

Our chef had one non-negotiable: the morning market at Labuan Bajo before we cleared the harbour. What returned to the galley shaped every dinner that followed — reef fish chosen by gill, not by guess. It is a small thing that becomes the whole thing.

“The famous sites are famous for a reason. The quiet ones are why you charter privately.”

Captain’s log, day four

Why the third anchorage matters most

Pink Beach and Padar earn their photographs. But it was the unnamed bay on the fourth evening — no other vessel, a reef wall starting two metres off the swim platform — that guests still write to us about. The crew knew it because the crew sails it weekly, not seasonally.

If you take one thing from ten nights aboard Lamima: book the crew, not the brochure. The vessel is extraordinary. The people who run her are why the trip is.