PHINISIS
The difference in the finished product is huge,
Boscarino explains, because dry wood is stronger, lighter,
easier to work, easier to paint and shrinks less than wet
wood – and the only way to dry wood is to store it
indoors and then work on it indoors. “The boatbuilders
for the British royal family only use wood that’s been
drying for at least a generation!” he tells me confidently.
But back to phinisis. The design, I learn, remained
virtually unchanged until the mid-1970s when owners
began adding engines and removing sails. Westerners
began commissioning phinisis as dive boats and charter
boats, driving up prices. “Back then you could build a
phinisi for US$10,000,” he says. “Now it can cost up to
a million.”
He tells me: “The woodwork is only a third of the
cost. Today charter boats are fitted with air conditioners,
desalination tanks and chef’s kitchens – they’re floating
hotels. The first thing Erik [Barreto] wanted was a hot
tub on the roof. I told him he was crazy. He also asked
for the windows to have curved edges like an iPhone. I
said I could do it, it’s a beautiful detail, but it added three
months to the build because every window had to be cut
from a solid piece of wood.”
It’s late in the afternoon when we pull into Jalan
Phinisi in Bira, where Boscarino is building another
vessel similar to Rascal. Only the keel, a 98ft (30m) slab
of ironwood, lies on the sand where a dozen-odd Bugis
boatbuilders with hangdog features are engaged in
various kinds of labour. One trio is making fasteners or
‘tree nails’ by inserting thick wooden splinters into a
cylindrical metal hole built into a vice and pounding
each splinter through the hole with big wooden mallets
cut straight out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. For a boat
the size of Rascal, 15,000 fasteners need to be made.
After checking on his men’s progress, Boscarino takes
me for a walk along the beach. Scattered along the sand
between herds of wandering goats and piles of plastic
rubbish are 50-odd phinisis: old boats being repaired,
new boats being built and others that appear half-built
and tilted on one side.
“That one,” says Boscarino, pointing to a half-
submerged phinisi askew on a reef, “was built by a
Dutchman. He sold everything he owned and came here
with dreams of building a phinisi and sailing off. But he
ran out of money and went home with nothing. And he
wasn’t the first one. The sign may say ‘Jalan Phinisi’, but
we call it the ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’.”
“If not for tourism,” he continues, “the phinisi design
and art would have died a long time ago. But it’s not
easy working here. You have to have a good connection
with the local people and you have to respect their
timing. If it’s Ramadan, they won’t work for a month
and that is that. You can’t just apply western
boatbuilding techniques here.”
I ask Boscarino if he’s read Collins’ memoir, Makassar
Sailing. “Many times,” he replies. “The same methods
the Bugis used back then, they still use now.
“But in the book, when his phinisi was finished,
Collins said ‘please put it in the water for me’. The Bugis
told him that will take 100 men a month using ropes and
pulleys and blocks, the same way the Egyptians moved
stones for the pyramids, and it will cost you so-many
dollars. That’s what happened to the Dutchman whowoodwork and smooth curved edges of the cupboard
doors. “That’s ironwood,” said my host, Ciaran
Caulfied, a mariner-turned-property developer from
Ireland. “It’s like steel. One of the strongest woods on
the planet.” It is more bountiful in Indonesia than
anywhere else, but has been over-harvested, leading to
strict restrictions on its use now. “We got this ironwood
from an old phinisi that was being broken up for scrap
at a yard in Surabaya, where all old phinisis go to die.”
“Phinisi?” interjected Barreto, who’d overheard our
conversation. “I’m building a phinisi right now in
Sulawesi. It’s called Rascal.”
But Rascal, it emerged, was no ordinary phinisi. Not
only did it lack a mast and sails, but the cabins and
saloon, usually found in the hull, were set in a
superstructure above deck. The spacious and rule-
breaking vessel would be fitted with modern marine
engines, navigation equipment and bespoke furnishings
designed by Charles Orchard, the interior designer
whose resumé includes work for the Four Seasons hotel
chain and the Orient Express. On completion, Rascal
would work as a luxury private charter boat, ploughing
the island-studded waters of Komodo National Park and
Raja Amput in eastern Indonesia.
Rascal would marry the facade of a traditional
Indonesian schooner with the interior of a modern
boutique hotel. Would the two things work together, like
bacon and eggs, or would they slowly grind against each
other like metal and rock?
“Three months from now,” Barreto said in answer to
my next question. “And yes, you’re more than welcome
to join us.”TRADITIONAL METHODS
Three months later and I’m in Sulawesi, in the back of a
taxi to Bira on a gruelling seven-hour odyssey along 160
miles of dilapidated and screamingly busy Indonesian
country roads.
Seated next to me is Raul Boscarino, an Italian
boatbuilder now working for Barreto. Limber and
leather-skinned in his early 50s, he admits: “When I first
saw phinisis I was sceptical, because of the way they are
made. In Europe, we build yachts in climate-controlled
factories, but in Bira they build them right on the
beach!”Clockwise from
top left: traditional
methods still used
today; a deckhand
on Amandira; Raul
Boscarino in
Sulawesi; the
author lending a
hand; luxurious
master cabin on
Amandira; Erik
Barreto