Crafting relationships in a Surabaya shipyard

Crafting relationships in a Surabaya shipyard

Duncan Graham, Contributor, Surabaya

A famous French TV journalist has launched Indonesian wooden
boat-building skills into Europe with the commissioning of a 16.5
meter sailing craft based on a traditional archipelago design.

The keel of the unnamed 12-tonne boat coded K111 has been laid
in the Mitra PAL shipyards in Tanjung Perak, Surabaya. The boat
is expected to be ready for delivery early next year.

It will cost Paris-based reporter Gregoire Deniau about
100,000 Euros (Rp 1.25 billion) and will be used on the Red Sea,
mainly as a pleasure craft.

The shipbuilders hope that the high profile of K111's new
owner will help promote the Surabaya shipyards overseas.

K111's designer, marine architect Michael Johnson, said it
would cost four to five times that amount to construct the boat
in Europe, while getting the timber outside Indonesia might prove
impossible.

Commercial wooden boat-building skills are now rare in Europe
and North America, as aluminium and fibreglass are widely used.

Although Indonesians seldom follow the Western system of
naming boat types, this two- or three-sail style of craft is
generally known in Sulawesi as bago lambo, a general purpose
fishing vessel using wind and diesel power.

It is being built of seasoned merbau timber from West Irian.
The design is based on the traditional flat Indonesian pajala
keel with a draft of 1.1 meters. This allows shallow in-shore
operations. Lateral rudders provide stability. Maximum speed is
expected to be nine knots.

The boat builders are handpicked shipwrights from Central
Sulawesi who have worked on other projects with Mr Johnson in
Surabaya. They use electrical drills and saws along with ancient
hand tools like adzes.

Although the K111 design is based on traditional ideas, modern
technology is also employed. To overcome the difficulty of
obtaining naturally curved wood for the keel boomerang shapes are
created by laminating selected planks.

Last year, two wooden fisheries training vessels designed by
Mr Johnson were built in Surabaya for the regent of Jembrana,
Bali. After the tsunami hit Aceh 20 canoes were built for local
fishermen to use inshore. These are now being assembled in Aceh
by students from the Center for Marine Studies at the Institute
Technology Sepuluh Nopember Surabaya (ITS).

Almost Rp 2 billion to build the canoes was donated by Pt
Terminal Petikemas Surabaya (TPS), the Indonesian-Australian
company that runs Surabaya's sea container terminal.

ITS Marine Studies director Dr Daniel Rosyid said the wooden
boat project fulfilled a dream he had held since 2002. In that
year ITS sent 20 students and a 12-meter sailing boat they had
built to an international competition in the U.S.

The boat, a replica of craft used during the Napoleonic era in
France, was judged the most beautiful entry.

"At that time I envisaged a situation where Indonesian wooden
boat-building skills might be commercially recognised in the West
-- and now that's happened," Dr Daniel said. "I believe this
project will help improve our international relationships. We
need to build new friendships that have been so sadly damaged
since the so-called War on Terror began.

"Here we have an Englishman working with Indonesians to build
a boat for a Frenchman to be used in the Middle East."

Mr Deniau's discovery of ITS skills came about by chance. Two
years ago he was in East Java on an unsuccessful attempt to
interview the U.S. consul about the invasion of Iraq. While in
Surabaya he met then French consul Olivier Debray who invited him
to lunch.

Also at the table was Mr Johnson, an Englishman who normally
lives in France but who was then working as a consultant marine
architect to ITS. The conversation moved away from war zones,
into boat building and eventually a firm contract.

Mr Deniau, an award-winning journalist who specializes in
reporting from war zones, was not at the keel-laying selamatan
(blessing ceremony) because he was shooting a program in Somalia.