On 28 December 1618, Bontekoe left Texel as ship's master of the Nieuw Hoorn, bound for Bantam on Java. The voyage, and the account of it that Bontekoe would eventually publish, are particularly famous for the ship's dramatic explosion in the Sunda Strait, on 19 November 1619. Due to carelessness of the botteliersknecht, a barrel of brandywine caught fire. The fire spread to the smith's coals, and seemed to have been succesfully extinguished for a while, but later flared up again. Eventually, the fire reached the powder room. Although the crew had already started putting the gunpowder overboard, most of it was still on board and the ship exploded. Of the 119 people still on board, only two survived, including Bontekoe, who described how he flew a long way through the air and was then picked up by the crew members who had already fled the ship earlier during the fire by boat and barge.
After a long journey with lack of food and water, the survivors managed to reach a small island in the Sunda Strait, where coconuts grew. The survivors subsequently sailed to mainland Sumatra, where they were first able to buy food from the locals, but were later attacked by them, resulting in 15 deaths. On 13 December 1619, just before their arrival in Bantam, with which war with the VOC had meanwhile broken out, the survivors encountered a VOC fleet led by Frederik de Houtman. The latter took them to the newly founded Batavia.
Here Bontekoe was given a new ship under his command and joined Cornelis Reijersen's fleet sent to the South China Sea to try to conquer Macao and force the Chinese to trade with the Dutch.
