Prahu Building

prahu-building: Bugis prahus are built virtually everywhere where there are Bugis people, which includes all of coastal Sulawesi. Whole communities of shipwrights, sailors and carpenters are involved in building them. Watch;your boat grow from a pile of teak logs into a highly seaworthy strong vessel, said to the last 20-25 years. The work takes place on a palm-shaded beach and the shipwrights have about 8 tools between them, age old equipment including a giant wooden mallet. The only modern tools used are metal augers and steel blades. Long straight planks are hewn from solid teak logs from Kalimantan. Boats are built in cradles of scaffolding with round wooden bottoms and big broad beams ribbed like a whale. No iron is used, the entire hull is planked and fastened by long ironwoods pegs, then the frames are pegged to it. Deadeyes are carved from blocks of teak. Chaulking is shreds of paper bark poked into the cracks. Any modifications you want to make during the building could send the builders into total confusion and extend perhaps two months onto the completion of the job. So have them build it traditional, the way they know how. Belowdecks will be all modification. Bunks, tables, galley, proper floorboards and cupboards are totally unfamiliar to Indonesians who design their prahus to carry copra, stinking dried fish, timber, and live turtles to Java. Native sailors sleep and eat on deck in good or badweather and bunks below are useless because of the odor or lack of space. Sails are made of cotton cloth from India, about US$75 for the mainsail. Unless you want to sail sideways, order a full-length keel. Ballast is 4 tons of rocks. Jakarta has the cheapest motors in Indonesia; a prahu usually fits a 33 horsepower, though most (about 30,000 in South Celebes) are motorless because of the cost, lack of spare parts and repair difficulties. Buy reef charts at the syahbandar's in Surabaya- Pete Ichtisar Dari Kepulauan Indonesia: Bagian Barat, Bagian Timur (two parts). Although the labor itself is extraordinary cheap (shipwrights earn Rp1500 a day), the cost of a prahu isn't cheap because of all the miscellaneous incidentals and extra expenses. Indonesians are lovely people but very difficult to do business with. There could be crooked dealing, rotten timber, incompetent workmanship, bribes to immigration officials, police and harbour authorities. Figure on US$3000-4000. note: The port of Melaka on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia is reported to be the most expedient place to build a Malaysian-style sailing vessel, just as cheap and less irksome than having a vessel built in Indonesia.

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in Bali we must point out a very important distinction which the Balinese make between two clearly separate groups of ancestors. The first of these groups consists of the dead who are riot yet completely purified. This group is in turn subdivided in pirata, those riot yet cremated, and pitara, those already cremated. The former are still completely impure; the latter have been purified, but are still considered as distinct, individual souls. The second group consists of the completely purified ancestors who are considered as divine.
No contact is sought with the pirata, the dead who have not yet been cremated. Oil the contrary they are dangerous, Offerings must however be made for the redemption of their souls.

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