Outrigger Boat

Outrigger boats that you see on the photographs and video below are  typical boats which fishermen in Manokwari of Papua island use to catch fish or lobster. The boat is usually dug out of a single wooden log that is taken from the nearby forest. The length of the boat ranges from 4 to 6 meters depending on the cut log which is the raw material for boat building. Outrigger boat is very stable boat. The floats on either sides of the boat are made of light wood locally called kayu gabus or bamboo. Boat with outrigger is more stable than a boat or canoe without outrigger.

With these gabus or bamboo floats attached at both ends of the outriggers, the metacentric height (GM) of the boat can be increased significantly without needing to increase the breadth of the boat and her displacement. The average light displacement of this outrigger boat, which is the weight of the boat when it is empty without a fisherman sitting on it with his fishing gear, is around 50 to 70 kilograms for small boat and 60 to 150 kilograms for larger boat with lengths of 6 to 8 meters. Please, see the following video of how an elementary school Papuan boy in Manokwari Papua dragged his outrigger wooden boat from the beach to the sea to take lobster. He used wooden paddle to move the boat at sea.

Because of its slender hull, the water resistance of the boat is also small. It can be powered with outboard diesel or gasoline engine. Outrigger boat whose lengths are between 8 and 12 meters are usually used to transport passengers from one island to another or from the main island of Papua to many smaller islands.
The advantageous working principle of outrigger boat whose water resistance is small with greater stability has been used in the develop trimaran - a modern high speed marine vehicle that is used as pleasure boat or yacht. Some experimental trimarans are powered with diesel engine and wind.

The traditional outrigger boat in West Papua island that you see in this article does not experience many technological improvements. In the past when modernization had not entered the island, fishermen used paddle to power their boats. Now, although paddle is still used in many smaller boats, larger outrigger boats  that can carry up to  12 passengers are usually installed with a 25 to 40 horsepower outboard engine manufactured by Yamaha. Usually the propeller installed in such boats have three blades made of aluminum.by Charles Roring

Wooden Boat

The following is the drawing of wooden boats in Anggrem Harbor of Manokwari city. The boats play an important role in sea transportation connecting the coastal villages along the Cendrawasih (Geelvink bay) with the capital of West Papua province.  The average lengths of the boats are 20 to 30 meters with diesel engine as the main propelling power.

Drawing wooden boats manually as part of ship design job was an exhaustive task for me as a student of naval architecture. Now it is not difficult anymore due to the availability of cad drawing software for ship and boat design such as Delfship, Maxsurf, Rhino, Foran and etc. The time needed for manually drawing lines plan of a small boat was around three days to one week. With the help of Delfship or Maxsurf, we can design the lines plan within hours including watertight sub-division, resistance and propulsion calculation and hydrostatic assessment. Delftship can also be used to design the general arrangement of the boat. The design of linesplan and general arrangement, including the interior of the boat can be done simultaneously in Delfship, a robust cad drawing solution for naval architecture. Well, that's my opinion about drawing a boat from the engineering perspective.
Now I still draw boats manually not for ship design purposes but for artistic expression. Art drawing and cad drawing are different in process and purpose. In art drawing, an artist create beautiful drawing as final product. He or she begins sketching the boat hull, superstructure and the sea as her surrounding environment using pencil and then color it with colored pencil, watercolour or oil paints.
For naval architects, the drawing of lines plan, general arrangement and construction details are seen as tools to communicate design ideas to workers in workshops for later use in ship or boat building process. So, the drawings created by naval architects are not seen as final products but as tools to communicate ideas to those working in shipyard for the construction of the boat or ship.
If you see the above picture, you can easily say that it is an art drawing. Yes, there are boats in it but they are only artworks. The drawing cannot be used for construction. The drawing is a piece of artwork. To make the drawing, I had to visit the port of Anggrem in the Dorey bay of Manokwari city, the capital of West Papua province of the Republic of Indonesia. There, I took some photographs of the boats and used them later for writing articles in this blog and as reference for my drawing hobby. Because I studied naval architecture, I know the working principles of boats and ships but I do not want to discuss them here since the topics of boat design are very complicated. I present the above boat drawing in this post to you only to attract your attention to this wonderful watercraft or marine vehicle. I hope you can enjoy it. I will try to upload more drawings in my later posts. Thank you. by Charles Roring.

Also read: Drawing Human Figure; Cargo Wooden Boat; Wooden Boats in Indonesian Islands

Cargo Wooden Boat

People in shipping industry are familiar with such term as cargo ships and container ships. In today's post, I want to introduce another term cargo boat or cargo wooden boat, to be exact. "What is it?" you might ask. Well, it is a kind of vessel made of wood and used to transport cargoes and some people. If you visit small coastal towns and villages in the Indonesia islands, you will find such boats.

 Cargo wooden boats play very important role in inter-islands shipping industry. You will not find containers and cranes in seaport where these boats stay. All the loading and unloading of cargoes are conducted using man power. Porters carry the cargoes on their shoulders and throw them into the hatch at the main deck of the boat. Most often, passengers and cargoes are placed on the same deck inside the superstructure. Well, although these boats cannot be called passenger ship, they most often carry more than twelve passengers. So, if we enter one of the wooden boats, we will see cargoes among people and people among cargoes.

I had a chance of visiting Anggrem seaport of Manokwari city in Papua island of the Republic of Indonesia two days ago. I climbed and jumped on the main deck of a cargo boat and took some photographs of the outside view of the deck, the interior of the passenger deck and the cargo hold and the engine room. I was surprised to find out that the engine room was dark and I had to use flashlight to get the inside view of the engine room and the engines.

Although this boat can be considered traditional, they are powered by diesel engines and manned by experienced crews who didn't study in maritime academy but got their nautical knowledge passed down through generations by great seafarers of Indonesia. You won't find radar inside the wheel house. They use compass, maps and stars (if the weather is bright) to determine their position relative to the islands which they are heading. I don't how long these boats can continue serve the remote islands of Indonesia but I believe that they have been part of the daily life of most of the Indonesia people especially those who live along coastal towns and villages that cannot be accessed by cargo shipping or passenger shipping that emphasis their operation on the economic of scale and not on the delivery of goods to small number of people living in remote islands. Here such wooden boats are the princess of the sea. by Charles Roring

Wooden Boats in the Dorey bay of Manokwari

Wooden boats, similar to modern seagoing steel ships, are used to transport goods and people from one port to another. In the Dorey bay of Manokwari city, I saw some traditional wooden boats in a small jetty in Anggrem area during my walking tour yesterday afternoon. The hull and superstructure of one of the boats are painted with white and yellow coatings. On the average, the boats are powered by 200 horse power marine diesel engine and conventional three or four blades propellers. I was able to climb its top deck and took some photos of other boats around the area. There was a steel ship belonged to the local government. I know that it has been used as ferry connecting small coastal villages in the northern region of Papua island. Although the boats were constructed using traditional tools, they are quite safe and stable to sail across the sea.

When we are talking about traditional wooden boats design and building in Papua, we cannot categorized them as cargo ships and passenger ships. The decks where cargoes are stored are also used to carry passengers. I am doubtful if the crews or operators of these boats provide life-jackets to all the passengers and crews on board.

I went there with a friend of mine. On the other side, I saw the former shipyard built by a Dutch shipbuilding company.  Formerly known as Manokwari Scheepswerf Konijnenburg. Now it is called Fasharkan (Fasilitas Pemeliharaan dan Perbaikan or the Facility for the Maintenance and Repair). I am sad to tell you that it not working anymore. The expensive slipway and the shipbuilding facilities left by the Dutch  are  not developed or operated by the Indonesian government anymore. 

We talked with the some of crews of the boats. I asked them how much does it cost to go from Manokwari to Wasior. They said the ticket is Rp. 100,000 or around 11.3 US dollars. I requested this information because I want to get the exact ticket price for Wasior. a small town which now becomes the capital of Wondama Bay Regency. This regency has a large sea area which has been preserved by the government as the National Marine Park of Cendrawasih bay, one of the best coral reefs and scuba diving sites in the world.

From Wasior, tourists or scuba divers can hire another boat or small outrigger boats to continue their trip to Auri islands where they can do snorkeling and scuba diving there.
Most of the big islands of Indonesian archipelago have their own techniques in building traditional wooden boats. In Maluku, a small village that is famous for building boats is Asilulu. In North Sulawesi, villagers of Tanawangko are expert in building big boats that can carry up to one hundred passengers and several tons of cargoes.