Aqua Blu

Aqua Blu is a warship. She was launched at Brooke Marine in Lowestoft on September 7, 1967, commissioned into the Royal Navy on May 9, 1968 as HMS Beagle, and spent thirty-four years running hydrographic surveys (the Indian Ocean, the West Indies, South Africa, Scotland) with a complement of forty-five. She was one of four Bulldog-class coastal survey vessels, and she was reportedly the last Royal Navy ship built with wooden decks. Everything interesting about her today follows from that hull: she was built by a yacht builder, to commercial rather than military standards, for the specific job of staying at sea a long way from anywhere.

Two conversions

The Navy paid her off on February 7, 2002 and sold her the following month for £750,000 to a company in Poole. What came next was a full yacht conversion: a European family had her stripped and rebuilt with the help of a small army of craftsmen and naval architects, cut the superstructure back, and renamed her Titan. In that guise she carried twenty-two guests and twenty crew.

The second conversion is the one that produced the ship on offer here. Aqua Expeditions bought her, put her through a drydock reconstruction across 2018 and 2019, and had the Dutch designer Cor D. Rover redo her as a passenger vessel. She came out as Aqua Blu: 198 feet, 37 in the beam, 1,140 gross tons, five decks and fifteen suites. Lindblad charters her for a handful of Indonesian departures a year and runs her at fourteen cabins for twenty-eight guests, with thirty-two staff and crew, a lighter load than the thirty the yacht is capable of carrying under her own charter program, and a heavier crew list, because Lindblad puts naturalists and an undersea specialist aboard on top of the hotel side.

Why the naval pedigree matters here

Indonesia is 17,000 islands spread across three time zones, and the distance between the two things most people want to see (the dragons at Komodo, the reefs of Raja Ampat) is roughly the distance from London to Warsaw. Most of the fleet working these waters is wooden phinisi schooners, beautiful and slow, and their itineraries are built around not crossing that gap.

Aqua Blu crosses it. She has a steel hull designed for sustained open-ocean passages, four Lister Blackstone diesels, a range near 5,700 nautical miles, and Quantum zero-speed stabilizers, which matter less underway than they do at anchor, an overnight stop in an exposed anchorage is the difference between sleeping and not. She holds RINA class and is SOLAS and ISM compliant, which is not something every vessel in eastern Indonesia can say.

What is aboard

Fifteen suites in three sizes, all outside, from about 130 square feet at the small end to a little over 330. Two lounges, a library and TV room, a bar, a spa running Balinese massage and aromatherapy, an outdoor exercise area with a hot tub, and an expansive sundeck. Dining is indoors and al fresco, with a menu built by Benjamin Cross around the spice-trade route, which on this itinerary is not a marketing conceit; the ship calls at the islands the trade was about.

The water program is the reason to be aboard. She carries two Zodiacs and two tenders, kayaks, paddleboards, snorkeling gear, and scuba equipment with a compressor, with the dive program capped at ten certified divers per voyage. That makes her one of only two vessels in the Lindblad program where a certified diver can get in the water with a tank; National Geographic Orion is the other, and Orion is the only one Lindblad actually owns.

One thing worth knowing before you book. On December 18, 2019 she grounded on a reef off Wayag Island in Raja Ampat with guests aboard, refloated on the tide, and continued; the ship was not seriously damaged but the reef was, and local authorities assessed it afterward. It is a single incident from her first season and it has not repeated, but the waters she works are poorly charted and that is part of what you are buying.

Where she actually sails

Two departures, and they run back to back in the autumn of 2026. The first leaves October 26 for thirteen nights, listed out of Jakarta: Indonesia’s Spice Islands and Raja Ampat, which is Ambon, Banda Neira, the nutmeg islands of Run and Ai, the volcanic cone of Pulau Manuk, and then the karst archipelago of Raja Ampat by way of Gorong, Koon, Daram, Wayil, Sabuda and Momon. The second leaves November 8 for fourteen nights round-trip from Denpasar: Indonesia’s Coral Gardens and Komodo Dragons, taking in Komodo itself, Labuan Bajo, Maumere, the Pantar Strait marine park, the Kepulauan Barat Daya and Taka Bonerate national park, with Bali and Nusa Dua at either end.

That is the whole schedule in the database, two voyages, one season, filed under Asia, both finishing before the end of November. There is no Komodo day-trip version and no short sampler. Thirteen nights is the minimum entry.

Who she suits

Divers and serious snorkelers, first and last. The Coral Triangle holds more reef fish species than anywhere else on earth and these two itineraries are routed through the best of it, on a vessel that can actually reach the far corners rather than circling the near ones. She also suits anyone who finds a converted survey ship more interesting than a purpose-built expedition hull, and there is a good deal here to look at if you do.

She does not suit anyone wanting a big-ship holiday in Asia. Twenty-eight guests means no theater, no shops, no second dining room and no anonymity; you will know everyone aboard by the third day. She is a fifty-eight-year-old hull, and while she has been rebuilt twice, the passages are long, the anchorages are remote and the nearest hospital is often a day away. Anyone who needs to be close to medical care, or who wants a week rather than a fortnight, or who wants Indonesia in any month other than late October and November, should look elsewhere; this schedule offers exactly two chances and no alternatives.