Honest answer: most modern charter phinisi are motor sailers — diesel engines do the passage-making, and sails fly selectively, on suitable legs, in suitable weather, on vessels that carry working canvas at all. Some boats sail regularly and well; others carry masts and standing gaffs chiefly as the type’s defining silhouette. Both exist in the fleet, and reputable operators will tell you plainly which their vessel is.
This is not a scandal. It is the continuation of how the fleet has worked for seventy years.
The fleet has been motorized since the mid-20th century
Indonesia’s trading pinisi adopted engines from the 1970s onward, becoming Kapal Layar Motor (KLM — motor sailing vessels), the category under which wooden charter boats are still administered today. Sail areas shrank as engines took over schedules that wind could not keep. The purely wind-driven pinisi was already historical memory before the first dive charter was ever sold — background covered in what a phinisi is.
Why engines dominate charter operations
- Itineraries are anchorage-dense. A Komodo route is a sequence of short hops between islands, dive sites and park moorings — many legs are an hour or two, often inside reef-strewn channels where no prudent skipper sails a 200-tonne wooden ship.
- Schedules are contractual. Guests board with flights booked. Wind is not a party to the contract.
- Crewing math. A full seven-sail evolution needs hands aloft and on deck that a service-focused crew roster does not always carry.
- Park and safety rules. Maneuvering in Komodo National Park anchorages is engine work by regulation and common sense alike.
When the sails do fly
On longer open-water legs — crossings toward Raja Ampat, repositioning passages, or simply a fair afternoon breeze on a beam reach — vessels with working rigs set canvas, and the experience is genuinely different: the roll softens, the engine note drops, and a 30-metre hull settles into the motion it was shaped for. Vessels marketed for expedition routes are the likeliest true sailors; the rig anatomy involved is detailed in our rigging guide.
How to check before you book
- Ask the operator directly: “Does this vessel sail on charter, and on which legs?” Specific answers (“we set headsails and mizzen on the Sape Strait crossing when conditions allow”) are credible; vague ones (“traditional sailing vessel”) are decoration.
- Look at photos critically: bent-on canvas, chafe gear and running rigging under load indicate use; permanently bare gaffs indicate silhouette.
- Read the spec sheet for engine make and cruising speed — a vessel quoting 8 knots cruise under a named diesel is telling you how it actually travels. Our guide to reading phinisi specifications shows what the numbers mean.
Set expectations accordingly and no one is disappointed: you are booking a hand-built wooden ship with an honest engine and, on the right boat and the right day, the oldest propulsion there is. The charter-side view of which vessels deliver which experience is the territory of our twin site LuxuryPhinisi.
The spectrum, mapped honestly
It helps to think of the fleet in three bands. Working sailers — a minority, often expedition-oriented vessels on longer routes — carry full or near-full inventories and set canvas routinely when courses and conditions align. Motor-sailers in the literal sense — the largest band — carry partial inventories (typically headsails and mizzen) used opportunistically, with the engine as primary propulsion always. Silhouette vessels carry spars and standing gaffs with little or no working canvas; the rig is architecture. All three bands contain excellent boats; mismatched expectations, not the boats, produce the disappointed reviews.
The physics is worth one paragraph: a loaded 30–40 m wooden hull displacing a few hundred tonnes needs serious canvas area to move meaningfully in the light monsoon-lee winds typical of Komodo’s charter season. The historical trading rig was sized for exactly that job — but it also assumed a professional sailing crew and no schedule. Modern service crews, insurance frameworks and eight-guests-with-flights itineraries all push the other way. The engine is not laziness; it is the honest price of punctuality.
One more verification trick: video beats photos. Operators with genuinely sailing vessels almost always have footage of canvas drawing under way, because it is their best marketing asset. If every image shows bare spars at anchor at sunset, you have your answer — and it is still a beautiful boat, as long as you knew what you were booking.