02/05/2018
Bulding The Phinisi Ship
The Indonesian people have a long Tradition with wooden sailing boats that predates the arrival of their European Counterparts. The wooden Phinisi sailing vessels were first brought to Indonesia by the Bugis people, a rece of seefarers who have plied these waters as both merchants and pirates for hundreds of years.
They have traditionally been used both as transport and as cargo vessel and come in variety of size and rigs, and although in the past the craft tended to be smaller, it is not uncommon to find 30 to 40m and even 50m boats playing these waters.
The building of a phinisi is all rather allien to those used to the western tradition of boat building; they always been built right on the beaches of Indonesia with a minimum of ‘modern’ technology.
The logs are felled in the forests and then transported to the boat building site, where the keel is laid, and then the stem and stern post are erected. Then however, rather then setting up the inside framework first, these vessel are build by applying the planking first using only blind dowels to hold them together.
Only when the shape of the boat is complete are the frames fitted into the hull shell. Strange? Strange at it may seem to a western boat builder this has been the way among the indonesian islands for as long as anyone can remember. It is not uncommon to see only an A4 pencil-drawn floor plan of the boat nailed to a wooden pole onsite for reference. Depite these limitation however, these people, the sons of sons of the great-grandsons of the original Bugis boat builder, keep creating seaworthy works of beauty that are plying the waters of Indonesia as they have done for centuries.
