Can I ask about the booze prices-the info I read said it wasn't included?
Diversity is not licensed, so you need to take your own. I had the same on K2O in 2012.
In 2012, I drove to Broome and stored my car, so I took all my liquor with me.
This time I utilised the service of Diversity where they have an arrangement with a bottleshop in Broome. A week or so before departure, they send a list from the bottleshop and you let Diversity know what you want. The bottleshop puts your order together, phoning if something is out of stock, allowing choice of a substitute. They (the bottleshop) total the price, discount it by 10% and you pay over the phone. Diversity pick it up and stash it onboard ready to go when you arrive.
PJM doesn't drink red wine, and neither if us drink beer to any extent, so I ordered 2 dozen white wines and took with me as hand luggage 5 bottles of red wine and a bottle of gin. All soft drinks and mixers are provided.
Diversity also provided gratis welcome drinks (well, at least Chandon sparkling) on boarding in the late afternoon (K2O did the same in 2012) and there were a few other occasion occasions (Montgomery Reef 'booze cruise', bonfire night and the final night's sundowner at a waterfall) where they also cracked some more Chandon sparkling, as well as taking your own drinks out in eskies.
The biggest trick is estimating how much to take. (Their notes say to allow more than you might typically drink at home!)
The other observation that I would make is that the quality of the food is so good, I would recommend taking some good wines if you are into your wine. Back in 2012 I regretted not taking better red wines, particularly. It was hard to know back then what the food would be like. I learnt then that these Kimberley coast voyage boats do not just chuck a bit of fish or meat on the barbie or just have a sanger at lunch. They employ professional chefs of high quality.
As mentioned, breakfast alternated cooked/continental, but lunch and dinner were always the full monte, so it was wine lunch and dinner.
Our chef on this trip was Australian of French heritage and he had worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in Britain/Europe and hatted restaurants in Melbourne. His style was very French and he was an absolute wizard at making flavours sing. The food was stunning.
He was wanting a break from the Melbourne scene and a colleague had taken the chef position on Diversity III, and suggested the Diversity ii gig to our man.
We ran our drinks down to finish on the last day, pretty much by natural progression. Bearing in mind that we had, at short notice, an extra night on board, perhaps balanced off by a few gratis sparklings, I was pretty spot-on with my estimate - but I did have the 2012 experience to guide me.
We had beef on the final night and I had one bottle of red left, and one of the other blokes had run out of red, so I shared my bottle with him. There was probably a little bit of that happening and I'm sure the boat had leftovers as extras to ensure nobody went dry.
Is the boat big enough if certain passengers can't get along?
That's too hypothetical for me to answer. Both voyages of this nature that I've been on, everyone got on like a house on fire. I think intrinsically there would be a high commonality of interest (fishing notably being one on both occasions - even though I can take it or leave it, others were quite passionate.) I can't imagine anyone being so nasty that they would go on such a trip or be given the opportunity to disrupt everyone.
