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BUGINESE BOAT BUILDER
In Southern Suluwesi,
traditional boat builders still make wooden
sailing ships the same way that they have
been doing so for hundreds of years. These
boats are called pinisi, or Phinisi
schooners. They are made by the Bugis boat
builders on the beaches of Southern Suluwesi
in the Bulukumba area, at places like Tanah
Beru. You can find an agent to help you
build a bugis pinisi schooner in Ujung
Pandang (Makassar).
You will need to find yourself a master boat
builder. Go to Tanaberu and look around the
beach. Along the beach there may be up to
fifty boats being constructed along the palm
lined beach of this seashore village.
Southern Suluwesi is one of the most famous
areas for traditional boat building. They
make cargo boats for the still sailing
commercial fleets of pinisi schooners that
carry goods all across the Indonesian
Archipelago. Go to Surabaya harbour or Sunda
Kelapa in Jakarta and you will see hundreds
of sails of these pinisi schooners loading
and unloading produce to trade all around
the islands.
The boat builder
of the traditional pinisi bugis schooner
lays down the keel first. The keel is made
from two black Borneo or Sulawesi ironwood tree
trunks. The keel is probably about seventeen
meters long, sixty centimeters thick , and
sixty centimeters wide. With the keel laying
it is necessary to do a traditional keel
laying ceremony. There used to be wild teak
and ironwood forests in Southern Suluwesi
but these have long gone. So timber has to
be imported and many boat builders have
followed the timber to places like Batucilin
in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Even these areas
are running out of wood and the boat
builders have had to move further afield in
Kalimantan to follow the supply of wood.
Instead of putting in the
frame first, the Bugis boat builders lay the keel first
and then the skin. The hull planks (which are typically
about eight centimeters thick) are pegged together with
their edges adjoining and one after the other. These
ships therefore do not rely for their ribs for their
strength. A typical Bugis pinisi schooner will be about
eight meters wide and thirty four meters long. But
building a Bugis pinisi schooner is not a short project.
Building one can take up to a year, so you need to have
lots of patience and succumb to "jam karet" or
Rubber Time ( Not on time )
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