How Kelly’s Bali holiday became a high-speed, Indo odyssey. From the pages of Tracks Issue #578.

Troy Sinclair typically spends his days running his resort, Batu Karang, on the island of Nusa Lembongan. It’s a sweet gig but things had been a little slow on account of COVID and the corresponding tourist restrictions. Troy decided it was a good time to follow up on a little boat project he’d been working on. He figured chartering a boat could provide him with an alternative income stream in hard times. Meanwhile, the surfer in him dreamed of owning a high-speed vessel that would transport him to any of Indonesia’s best waves on a whim.

You see this was no ordinary runabout. It was a repurposed Russian special forces, navy strike boat; 12 metres of sleekly engineered, high-powered marine transport with a top speed of 55 knots and a cruising speed of 38-40 knots.

Once he’d purchased the new boat, Troy was like a kid with a new toy and began conducting speed trials around the archipelago. He soon figured out he could get from his dock on Lembongan to Desert Point on Lombok in 35 minutes. If he picked up passengers from Serangan in Bali it only added another 20 minutes. G-land in east Java was an hour-forty-five on a good run and Sumbawa was less than four hours away. The boat also came fully equipped with infra-red cameras and sophisticated sonar, so you could surf all day and come home after dark. Invariably, the boat which was soon dubbed the KaikoaIndonesia, radically redefined the scope of Troy’s surfing universe.

How Kelly’s Bali holiday became a high-speed, Indo odyssey. From the pages of Tracks Issue #578 Troy Sinclair typically spends his days running his resort, Batu Karang, ...