The Amazing Charter from Wisconsin

A little change to our normal schedule, we had a group of 11 divers from Wisconsin join us on the Jaya for a 7 day, 6 night charter in and around the Komodo National Park. Scott, Mariza, Erik and Amanda were looking after our guests from Breezeway Bubbles dive club, with Captain Ahmad at the helm, Sulaiman keeping an eye on the engine, Hari, Marwan and Dulla looking after dinghies and tanks, and Jos and Ardy in the kitchen keeping us all well fed!

We started the trip at Sabayor for a check dive along the wall, a little bit of a drift, and plenty of fish,   good start to the trip to let everyone check out weights and equipment. We made a night dive just along the reef, saw a few massive Spanish dancers, loads of nudibranchs and a couple of cuttlefish.

The next morning we made our way into the national park, and started our Komodo experience with a drift along Tatawa Besar. The split was full of snapper and trevallies, and when we left and headed into the current, the drift was beautiful, flying over orange soft corals, turtles swimming along next to us, and schools of sweet lips and batfish.

We wanted to dive Batu Bolong next, but the currents were far too strong, so we went West to Karang Makassar for another drift along the reef, huge unicorn fish, loads of blue lined and yellow margin triggerfish, and an eagle ray finished the dive off nicely.  A chilled out dive along the reef at Gili Lawa Darat for our 3rd dive of the day, then we headed north west out of the park to Gili Banta.

The island of Banta is about 15 nautical miles from Gili Lawa, and we were lucky enough to see dolphins on the way across, and a gorgeous sunset. It's not actually in the confines of the national park, so unfortunately there's still a lot of fishing going on across there, but hopefully the park boundaries will be extended to include Banta soon. The coral reefs are stunning, so many different varieties of soft and hard corals , and loads of reef fish. We dived 4 different reefs around the island, a night dive when we arrived and then 3 the next day, and there was so much to see. Orang utan crabs in many of the mushroom corals, clouded moray eels, a massive ribbon tail ray, nudis everywhere and we were lucky enough to snorkel and then dive with a few reef mantas, lots of extremely happy guests! Good times for the staff as well - it's such a cool experience to not only be seeing such beautiful marine life, but to be sharing the first time experience of others seeing manta rays.

Beach time afterwards for Ryan to go exploring, Wanda and Sarah took the opportunity to go snorkelling while the rest of us enjoyed some frisbee and sunbathing!

From Banta we made our way back into the Komodo National Park, had a fab drift dive through the Cauldron, then a super fishy dive at Castle Rock, loads of sharks including a couple of massive grey reefs cruising around, big fusilier bait ball, and loads of jacks, tuna and Spanish mackerel. Late afternoon dive through the Passage - loads more sharks and turtles, cool drift, and everyone very happy with the amount of big fish!

Break from diving for a bit, we took some time to dinghy across to the beach, and climb a mini hill to watch the sunset over Komodo and Sangeang. Quiet is overrated, so we had music time with Joseph and Mariza, plenty of photos and group shots, with Don photo bombing whilst trying to throw stones into the water below!

Next day 2 dives in the North, with even more sharks, then down to Karang Makassar for a peaceful drift along the reef - many turtles and bumphead parrotfish, then we cruised towards Wainilu. Dulla spotted a pod of dolphins near to the boat, so we changed course to go past them, and they played in the wake for us for over half an hour - Ahmad and Sulaiman were very good to us driving the Jaya round and round in circles as we watched the dolphins spin and jump! After that, a beautiful Wainilu night dive, plenty of critters, scorpionfish and inimicus galore, a funky red octopus, plus loads of nudis to keep Casi happy!

Due to a midday flight the next day, we just made just one dive on the penultimate day of the trip, at Batu Bolong, and it was an incredible dive to finish on, so many fish, huge napoleon wrasse, a massive school of rainbow runners, and turtles chomping up the reef not at all worried about us taking photos. The rest of the day was spent snorkelling and relaxing as we put the sails up and headed down to Rinca for a couple of hours trekking to look for Komodo dragons. From there it was on to Kabba to watch the bats fly from the mangroves to the mainland. They're quite reliable in the times they fly, usually, but this trip they were a little later than expected, and we saw 10 or 15 bats at first, which was cool, but that then made the several hundreds of thousands that we saw just 10 minutes later ever more awesome!

Unfortunately that was all the fun we could fit in this Komodo Liveaboard, so the next morning, back in to Labuan Bajo to get everyone off to the airport for the next leg of their diving adventure. Thanks to Casi, Don, Dean, Daryl, Ryan, Eric, Wanda, Chelsey, Sarah, Brooke and Joseph for joining us on the Jaya - hope to reunite you all again somewhere else Wicked!


-Wicked Diving Komodo