How phinisi are built, rigged, certified and kept alive — the craft behind Indonesia’s wooden fleet.
A commercial phinisi in Indonesia sails under certificated officers: the captain and deck officers hold ANT tickets (Ahli Nautika Tingkat — nautical competency grades), engineers hold ATT tickets (Ahli Teknika…
Published yard guides and owner accounts converge on clear ranges: a Bulukumba-built phinisi hull takes roughly 8–12 months at 20 metres, 12–18 months at 30 metres, and 18–24+ months at…
Gross tonnage (GT) measures a vessel's total enclosed volume, not its weight. The figure comes from a formula applied to the ship's internal volume under the 1969 International Tonnage Convention…
A phinisi spec sheet tells you almost everything about the trip you are buying — if you read the right five numbers in the right order: length overall (LOA), gross…
Every working phinisi comes out of the water roughly every 12 to 24 months for a haul-out: a scheduled docking during which the hull is surveyed, seams are inspected and…
On a phinisi, teak (Tectona grandis) owns everything you see and touch: laid decks, deckhouses, rails, saloon joinery and cabin interiors. The structural skeleton below — keel, frames, lower planking…
A planked wooden hull is watertight because of its caulking: fiber driven into every seam between planks, sealed with compound. Caulking is sacrificial by design — it works, ages and…
Honest answer: most modern charter phinisi are motor sailers — diesel engines do the passage-making, and sails fly selectively, on suitable legs, in suitable weather, on vessels that carry working…
Ulin (Eusideroxylon zwageri, Borneo ironwood) is dense enough to sink in water — air-dry densities run roughly 960 to 1,140 kg/m³ — and it is the timber phinisi builders reserve…
A classic pinisi rig carries seven sails on two masts: three triangular headsails set on the bowsprit, a large gaff mainsail on the mainmast, a smaller gaff mizzen on the…