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My recent rediscovery of Papua New Guinea, which remains one of the world’s lesser known but most appealing cruising destinations, was via a unique and luxurious style of travel called the "boutique adventure cruise." This time I was a passenger on the 50-meter (164-foot) True North, a 36-passenger adventure-cruise vessel based in Australia. I found the accommodations far more comfortable than those on my first visit, but the destination just as appealing.

The True North experience traces its roots back to 1987 in Fremantle, Western Australia, where the post-America’s Cup hangover gripped the rather quaint port. Craig Howsen, a Fremantle lad, had just finished the year as skipper of a local support vessel for the Canadian America’s Cup squad. When the Cup went back to San Diego, and its well-heeled visitors similarly departed, Howsen was faced with the reality of returning to commercial cray fishing to make ends meet.

Instead, he and his brother elected to buy an old 60-foot cray boat and convert the vessel for charter. They decided to focus on a little-explored and sparsely charted region known as the Kimberley Coast, some 1,600 nautical miles north of Perth, the capital of Western Australia. Diving the offshore reefs, identifying 40,000-year-old aboriginal rock art in the stunning red canyons, exploring crocodile-infested rivers and estuaries, running perilous tidal bores and making trail-blazing reconnaissance missions became their stock-in-trade.

Twenty years and five upgraded vessels later, Howsen and his new partner Mark Stothard, founder of Image Marine, part of the Austal and leading superyacht builder Oceanfast conglomerate, continued this concept into a recently launched, design-specific vessel called, like her predecessors, True North. After pioneering the Kimberleys, Howsen and Stothard decided to continue their popular cruise schedule in season, but also expand into Papua New Guinea. Their just-launched Papua New Guinea concept is called "Going Wild in Style."

The latest True North carries her own air-conditioned, seven-passenger Bell helicopter and is fully equipped with dive compressors, extensive fishing tackle and six custom aluminum adventure tenders. Our eight-day sojourn began and finished in the North Queensland, Australia, town of Cairns, which has an international airport. Here my wife and I, along with 19 other guests and replacement crew, boarded an aircraft chartered by North Star Cruises, True North’s corporate owner, for a two-hour flight to Port Moresby. Entry formalities were completed, and it was wheels up for Alotau, gateway to Milne Sound and Papua New Guinea’s island-strewn east coast.

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