The great thing about Indo is you can normally stay and travel all around for not much money.
Years ago, I managed to book a 992$ trip on a boat with five other guys. At that time it was quite manageable to avoid the crowds. But this kind of boat trip ended quickly and the Mentawai business moved up to another scale.
It costs something now like three times more to spend two weeks on a factory boat, a price for which you find yourself packed with ten or twenty other guys to reach waves with sometimes until six or seven more crowded boats. Bilboards and shady promoters never had any trouble in pushing the masses to waste shitloads of money for crap. We all knew surfers ain’t Nobel prize winners, but that’s another story…
I’d rather like to avoid the “mass hysteria” for my part, so if you still plan this kind of trip the first thing you need to know is that boats and resorts in the Mentawai are like total bulshit. Apart from being too expensive for what it is, it’s an unfair business of local resources made by foreigners where nothing goes back to the people; we are talking of a place where they don’t even have running water or electricity.
Everyone should know that.
You can actually go there for the same price as anywhere else in Indo.
And keeping away from this kind of colonial exploitation provides great opportunities for more legitimate experience, support to local life, and eventually free surf outside the insane boat circus, without being extorted. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t be a little upset at having yourself sheared like a sheep by a bunch of greedy exploiters?

The boat that I caught was called Electric Lamb (picture above) and sank some time later, adding to the long list of shipwrecks in Indonesia :

In June 2018 Nick Carroll wrote an article putting the fear of God into surfing tourists considering Indonesia as a destination. Painting with a broad brush, Nick writes, “Yet the lack of safety backup at these resorts is surf tourism’s little secret.” Nick followed up his first article with another, which refined his broad brush-style and also mentions charter boats as part of the larger industry-wide issue.
[…]
Here is a list of Mentawai charter boat industry accidents that have happened in the last 20 years.

CHARTER BOATS LOST, WITH PAYING GUESTS ON BOARD

• KAIMANA DUA: HIT THE REEF, SUNK
• SIBON ORI: HIT THE REEF, SUNK
• SRI WIDANA: SUNK / LOST
• ALYSSA: SUNK / LOST
• STAR KOAT: DRIVEN ONTO THE REEF CAUGHT FIRE / SUNK
• QUEST 1: SUNK / LOST
• KATIKA: FIRE / SUNK
• PARIALANG: FIRE / SUNK
• SRI WIDANA: DRAG ANCHOR ONTO BEACH AT HTS
• DIANE: WASHED ONTO THE BEACH AT MACARONIS
• MIDAS: FIRE / SUNK
• NATANYA: DRIVEN ONTO THE REEF/ SUNK
• DUKUN LAUT: SUNK / LOST
• ANJING LAUT: SUNK

CHARTER BOATS LOST, WITH NO PAYING GUESTS ON BOARD

• INDIES EXPLORER: FIRE / SUNK
• KAIMANA DUA: FIRE
• ELECTRIC LAMB: SUNK
• NORJA: SUNK
• LAUTAN MEGA: FIRE / SUNK

https://wavepark.com/blog/choosing-a-holiday-with-safety-in-mind/