Dear adventurers,

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How do I get to Indonesia by boat? What are the options for a no-fly destination from New Zealand? Is it possible to travel by cargo ship? And how do you find a sailboat if you have no experience?

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In this newsletter, we're going to tell you how we failed to leave New Zealand to reach Indonesia by boat ;) We'll give you our tips and advice - because failures are formative!

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Our initial objective was ambitious: to find a boat to reach Indonesia directly from New Zealand, or possibly with a stopover in Australia or the Pacific Islands.

We had two options: a sailing boat or a cargo ship. 

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"A cargo ship? That's super polluting, isn't it?

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According to the IMO (International Maritime Organisation), shipping accounted for 2.2% of CO2 emissions in 2012. However, given its large capacity, a cargo ship is the least polluting means of transporting goods! Also, unlike aircraft, the main service offered by cargo ships is not the transport of passengers: with or without us, the cargo ship makes its journey, and our demand does not meet a supply. 

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Sailing on a cargo ship offers the comfort of travelling as a simple passenger, with cooks and facilities such as gyms.

The downside is that a cargo ship takes longer to get to its destination than any other ship: it makes a lot of stops and is slow. Also, we had heard that being a passenger on a cargo ship is very expensive. We think it depends on the cargo ship, whether they have rooms reserved for passengers (and therefore are used to offering this service) or not.

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But how do you find a cargo ship?

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We explored the itineraries of cargo ships passing through New Zealand ports. The website www.fluentcargo.com was very useful! It provides invaluable details such as the port of departure, the port of arrival, the ports of call, the journey time, the shipping company and even the ship number. With all these details, we were then able to contact the company and specify the route we were interested in (in this case, NZ to Indonesia or NZ to Australia or Australia to Indonesia). If the company has offices in the city you're in, we advise you to go there in person, but we don't think it's worth going directly to the port as security is very tight.

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We called and e-mailed over 33 people from 4 different companies: Cargo, CMA CGM, Maersk and Swire. The replies were rare and all negative because of security issues on board (?). 

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We also tried to use agencies specialising in passenger transport aboard cargo ships. However, it seems that since Covid, these agencies no longer operate: their websites have not been active for several years and our attempts to contact them have been unsuccessful.

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So we think that since Covid, cargo ships have restricted access to their staff. After much effort, we have abandoned this idea.

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How do you find a sailboat? 

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Our second option was to sail to Indonesia on a sailboat: much sexier!

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Several websites were very useful: Findacrew, Bourse aux équipiers, Sail the world, Equipier.fr, Ocean crew link, Crew bay... We looked at them almost every day, and we contacted a lot of captains thanks to them! 

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At the same time, we joined over twenty Facebook groups to post our advert and prospect. We think that the biggest Facebook groups, which specialise in finding boats and crew (e.g. Crew Finder), are overcrowded and it's therefore difficult to stand out from the other crew members. We've had more contacts by writing on small local sailing groups (Northern Territory Sailors or Opua Cruisers Net Group, for example). 

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A word of advice if you're looking for a sailboat: post a visual ad! We had more response to our photo ad than to our written ad. Also, emphasise your skills: playing an instrument, cooking, taking photos, surfing, diving, etc. Captains often favour dynamics and interests over experience.

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We also called a lot of marinas, but they couldn't give us any contacts and most of them redirected us to Facebook groups, or advised us to come and put an advert on their notice board.

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Despite all our efforts, we haven't been able to find a boat leaving New Zealand. We think there are several reasons for this: 

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- We were working in Dunedin until the end of September to make money for our project, so we were looking to leave New Zealand from the beginning of October. The problem was that in the South West Pacific, the cyclone season runs from November to April. In October, most sailboats return to New Zealand after spending their summer in the islands. It wasn't the ideal time for our itinerary, and we couldn't wait for May, the start of the 'good season'.

Also, working in Dunedin didn't allow us to visit the North Island marinas, where you're more likely to find a sailboat (Opua and Auckland are the most popular). We really recommend visiting the marinas!

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-The Tasman Sea is known for being very turbulent: the NZ - Pacific Islands - Indonesia route is therefore more frequent than the one via Australia. Difficult when you're not very experienced!

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-I think we underestimated the distance between New Zealand and Indonesia, which is equivalent to that between France and India! It's not that easy to find a boat that will cover that distance.

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Plan B

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Looking through all the Facebook groups, websites and cargo ship itineraries, we noticed that many boats heading for Indonesia make a stopover in Darwin, Australia: it's the closest major city to Asia. So we thought that if we went directly to Darwin and visited the marinas and met the people there, we'd have a good chance of finding a sailboat. In fact, we think that's the best way! Most sailors don't go online to find crew.

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Nevertheless, determined to limit flying, we looked at the carbon footprint of the different routes we were interested in (average of several carbon footprint calculation sites, including My Climate, ADEME, Bon Pote...)

Auckland-Sydney: 351 kg 

Darwin-Denpasar (Bali): 404 kg

Auckland-Denpasar: 1.1 tonnes

Auckland-Darwin: 852 kg

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So we decided to take a plane from Auckland to Sydney, and hitchhike to Darwin (see our newsletter on Australia for more details on this adventure). If we still can't find a boat there and have to take a plane again, we'll still have limited our impact!

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Arriving in Darwin on 13 October, we posted our advert in the city's marinas and sailing clubs. Although we often heard that it was too late to sail to Indonesia and that the yachts had already weighed anchor at this time, we also met sailors who said that this was the 'last window' with ideal conditions to leave.

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On our first day in Darwin, we met a young Belgian-Dutch couple who had just bought a sailboat that they needed to refit before heading off to the Raja Ampat islands in north-east Indonesia. We exchanged numbers, and they contacted us a few days later to ask us to come with them, departing on 5 November! We were delighted, but it was impossible for us to get to the Raja Ampat islands without later taking a plane to south-west Indonesia or the Asian continent. After studying their itinerary, we decided to go with them and leave the boat on the island of Saumlaki. From there, a ferry operated by the national company Pelni will take us to Bali on 12 November. Ferries from this company are rare and difficult to plan for the route we're interested in, so there's no question of missing this one. 

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When the owners of the sailing boat told us that they wouldn't be leaving on the 5th after all, and were unable to give us another departure date, the stress was mounting. They finally stopped replying to our messages, leaving us in despair. But that's what boat-hitchhiking is all about: finding a boat, getting involved in the project, researching the itinerary and the aftermath, only to realise that our respective plans don't match up. We realised that to boat-hitch, you have to be very flexible, both in terms of your timetable and your itinerary. Unfortunately, our lack of flexibility, dictated by our imperative to return to France before September 2024, and our desire to minimise the use of planes, meant that we were dependent on the sometimes scarce and hazardous public transport routes by sea and land.

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Leaving on the fly

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We finally took a plane from Darwin to Bali. After so much effort, it was very demoralising. But we knew that crossing two seas wasn't easy! Especially at this time of year.

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Still, we're ready to try the boat-hitchhiking experience again in the future. But this time, not as a means of transport from point A to point B, but just for the sailing experience.

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We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter. It's particularly close to our hearts, as it bears witness to a project that has taken up a lot of our time and energy. We've been through a lot! We also hope that our experience will be useful to other people with the same objective as us. Don't hesitate to contact us, we'll be delighted to hear from you.