Sundowner & day charters from Benoa Harbour, Bali

The Golden Hour, Afloat

I have watched the Bali sunset from most places worth watching it from. Then I watched it from the water.

By Pramod Kumar, Founder — NatureLust

Sundowner & day charters from Benoa Harbour, Bali

The sunset is the same sunset from the beach club and from the boat. The difference is that most people are watching it from a queue.

I have done the beach club version many times. Book weeks ahead, arrive two hours early to hold a daybed, pay for the bottle you did not especially want, and then watch one of the most photographed sunsets in world tourism over the top of several hundred other people's raised phones. It is still beautiful. I am not going to pretend otherwise. It is simply not private, and after enough years in Bali I stopped noticing it at all.

The first time I went out on a sundowner charter I went as a favour to someone, expecting a pleasant enough evening and a slightly better view. What I had not understood is that it is not a better view. It is a different thing entirely — four hours rather than one, and an evening you control rather than an event you attend.

The yacht slips out onto glassy water as the afternoon softens. A DJ builds the evening rather than performing at it. Canapés come out of a galley rather than a service window. And when the sun goes into the Indian Ocean you have a glass in your hand and roughly two hundred degrees of unobstructed horizon in front of you, with nobody standing in it.

No queue. No neighbouring table. No closing time you did not set yourself.

What the evening actually looks like

Formats vary with the yacht and the occasion, but the classic Nusa Dua run gives you the shape of it. This is the one I have done most often.

The hour I did not expect to matter is the one from four to five, before the light does anything at all. Everyone is in the water, nobody is looking at a phone, and the evening has not started yet. On the beach club version that hour is spent holding a table.

Book the beach club and you get the sunset. Book the boat and you get the evening.

The evening I keep coming back to

There is one charter I think about more than the others, and it was not the most elaborate. Eight of us, a birthday nobody wanted made a fuss of, and a flat sea. We anchored off Nusa Dua and stayed in the water for well over an hour, which is longer than anyone plans to. One of the group had said in the car that he did not really swim. He was the last one out.

The thing I remember is not the sunset, which was ordinary by Bali standards. It is that at around seven, alongside at Benoa, nobody got off the boat. The crew had finished, the music had come down to almost nothing, and we sat on the aft deck for another forty minutes because there was no reason to stop. You cannot do that at a beach club. Somebody will politely need your table.

That is the part I try to explain to people and usually fail to. You are not booking a view. You are booking a few hours in which nobody else's schedule applies to you.

The crew and the food

A word on both, because they are the two things people ask least about and notice most. The crews on these boats are Indonesian, professional and almost entirely invisible until the moment you need something — which is a much harder skill than it sounds and the clearest marker of a good charter.

The food comes out of a proper galley with a chef aboard, not a hamper loaded at the dock. Canapés and hot food stations through the evening rather than a single served course, which is the right format for a boat where people are moving between the deck, the water and the shade. Dietary requirements are straightforward to accommodate if you flag them when you book. Indian vegetarian, in particular, is handled properly rather than apologetically — which, for the guests I most often bring out here, matters a great deal.

The boats

Three yachts, and the choice is mostly about numbers and what you intend the evening to be.

• Forever. Up to thirteen guests. The one I would take for a small group or a family — easy, comfortable, unfussy, with plenty of open deck for the size of the party.
• Elysian. Up to twenty guests. More yacht, more deck, and the right choice when the evening is the occasion rather than the setting for one.
• Jiwa. Up to twenty guests. The same capacity as Elysian with a different character — worth asking about both rather than assuming they are interchangeable, because they are not.

What comes with it, and what does not

If you have the whole day

The sundowner is the short version. Given a full day, the boat can go considerably further, and these are the routes I would put in order of preference.

• Nusa Penida. Manta Point in the morning, then a slow cruise along the south coast past Kelingking, Broken Beach and Batu Melawang — the cliffs are considerably more dramatic from the water than from the clifftop, and almost nobody sees them from this side. Lunch and snorkelling at Crystal Bay.
• Nusa Lembongan. Gamat Bay and Toya Pakeh for snorkelling, Mangrove Point for reef and colour, then beach time and paddleboards off Lembongan before the run home into a Benoa sunset.
• Nusa Dua. The short option — lagoon anchorage, swimming, and back for dinner.
• The Gilis and Lombok. Longer crossings for those who want to island-hop properly, with the day built entirely around where you want to stop.

Manta rays at Manta Bay are seasonal and never guaranteed. But when they are there, snorkelling alongside them under the cliffs of Nusa Penida is the single best hour of ocean available on a day trip from Bali, and I do not say that lightly.

The occasions it was made for

• Proposals. A yacht, a sunset and no audience you did not invite. We have arranged photographers who stayed entirely out of sight until the moment had happened.
• Milestone birthdays. Cake, DJ, swim platform, and no closing time imposed by anyone else.
• Corporate evenings and client entertaining. A private deck is a better room than any private dining room in Seminyak, and considerably more memorable.
• Wedding parties. Elysian and Jiwa take twenty, which covers most groups without splitting them across two boats.
• The first or last evening of a longer trip. Which is where, in my experience, it really earns its place.

A few honest notes

• Weather decides. The southern coast is reliable through the dry season, May to October. In the wet season the afternoon can turn, and the crew will tell you straight rather than take you out into it.
• Book the light, not the clock. Departure times shift across the year with sunset. We set the schedule backwards from the light, which is why the times above are indicative.
• Weekends and July to September go early. Midweek in the shoulder months is the same boat, the same sunset and a great deal easier to arrange at short notice.

All itineraries are indicative and subject to weather and sea conditions. Rates and availability confirmed at time of booking.