The ferry

I ended up having to pay for two tickets (300,000 rupiah) because they had no other people going to Kuta, but it worked out the same price and was less hassle than organising the individual legs would have been anyway.
The ferry trip was uneventful. That's a good thing I suppose. I sat and chatted with two guys, one an Austrian wood and leather artisan on his first trip to Indonesia and an Irish art teacher that's taken 14 months off to travel (starting in Bulgaria and making his way through eastern Europe to India, Nepal and Asia). The boat had very few passengers, mostly sprawled out on the seats and sleeping. How the one's in the deck area that had a blaring Indonesian music video show managed to sleep I'm not sure, but they did.
I found the one lifeboat that was on the ship, you can see it below. There were roll-off inflatables (next inspection date due January 2013), though.
As we came into Lembar Harbour a couple of guys (French and Chilean) approached and asked me if the boat was going to Kuta. I told them that, no it wasn't. They said they had bought tickets for 180,000 rupiah each to take them by boat to Kuta. Yes, you guessed it, they were on the same shuttle bus as me. There must have been some sort of miscommunication at head office and my agent hadn't been informed that there were now enough passengers and I could be given a refund.
The driver that picked us up gave us a rundown on the dangers of Kuta (muggings and thefts, and not to trust anyone but hotel staff for any deals). He then launched into a very convincing sales spiel about a deal he could do for us. All we had to do was say what places we wanted to visit and in what order and it would be an open ticket, we just have to call him when we want to go to the next destination (me *Kuta - Sengiggi - Gilis - fast boat back to Bali [500,000 rupiah]. The other two guys *Kuta - Gilis - fast boat back to Bali [400,000 rupiah]). What a bargain! We all took it. Let's see how that turns out.