Take Out, Sail Out

Shopping at sea? Enjoy APB’s guide to selecting the right at-sea concierge.

- Joyce Yip

LUKE PROKOPAVICIUS, owner of Bali-based yacht-provisioning company Compass Fresh, likens some of his deliveries to a mission in a James Bond movie.

Late last year, orders came in from Sorong, West Papua during the eruption of Mount Agung. With Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar shut down, his team had no choice but to hop onto a convoy of trucks with the client’s 150 boxes of food in the middle of the night to fly out from Surabaya Airport before morning traffic came. He only had 72 hours.

The mission was a success. In fact, such exotic challenges and adventures have become an everyday part of the business.

Makeshift helicopter landing pads were made from log piles during a delivery to a remote village in Papua New Guinea. And due to an anchoring problem on a client’s yacht, 32 boxes of meats, dairy, vegetables, fruit and pantry items were once offloaded while the boats were still in motion.

Prokopavicius’ favourite part of the story was when the credit card was swiped in the middle of the ocean, waves still rocking the vessel from side to side as the confirmation message popped up on screen.

“With the vast archipelago of Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populated country, you can imagine the number of hands the order can go through before it finally arrives to the client. Planes overloaded, volcanoes erupting, roads washed away, riots over fuel price rises, you name it,” he says, adding that Compress Fresh has made use of most forms of transportation including even horses.

“The vast knowledge of cargo logistics and connections throughout the country helps to provide our clients with their order when they want it, and we often have to use the many alternative routes and modes of transport available to us.”