Sibutu island preserves art of building wooden-hulled boats

Sibutu island preserves art of building wooden-hulled boats
Bong S. Sarmiento - August 7, 2022 https://www.mindanews.com/feature/2022/08/sibutu-island-preserves-art-of...

A lansa or wooden-hulled ship waits for cargo and passengers at the port of Sibutu, a town in Tawi-Tawi province known for its shipbuilding industry. MindaNews photo by BONG S. SARMIENTO
SIBUTU, Tawi-Tawi (MindaNews / 07 August) – Surrounded by high seas that serve as their playground, villagers in this remote coastal town have mastered the art of boat building, a craft they inherited from their forebears that allowed them to connect with the outside world.

Carved out of Sitangkai town in 2006, Sibutu has preserved the art of wooden-hulled shipbuilding, an age-old craft that facilitated the movement of people, goods and services between Sulu archipelago and neighboring Malaysia for centuries.

“We have been building wooden-hulled ships with the design drawn in our minds, no blueprint unlike the engineers of steel-hulled ships,” the 55-year old shipwright, Ustadz Amin Toroganan, said in an interview.

Toroganan learned and mastered the skills of wooden boat building from his father, uncles and their cousins, by watching them at work.

As he grew older, he became their helper, paving the way for him to become one of the skillful wooden boat builders in Sibutu, an island-town some three hours away by “lansa” (boat) from Bongao, the capital of Tawi-Tawi province.

A lansa is a large wooden-hulled cargo and passenger vessel conspicuously plying the high seas of Tawi-Tawi and neighboring Sulu province even as the Department of Transportation and Communications’ Marine Industry Authority (MARINA) has been pushing for the nationwide phase-out of wooden-hulled boats through Memorandum Circular 2016-02 issued on April 29, 2016.

Toroganan’s most unforgettable experience as a boat builder was being part of the team that constructed two replicas of the balangay in Butuan City in 2010, which was used by a team headed by former environment undersecretary Arturo Valdez in sailing across Southeast Asia.

Balangay replicas

Valdez, who led the first successful Philippine expedition to Mount Everest, launched the “Voyage of the Balangay” in 2009, first building a replica of the balangay in Manila with the masterful hands of Sama-Bajau tribesmen who came all the way from Sibutu and Sitangkai towns in Tawi-Tawi. It was used for the Philippine leg of the voyage.

At least nine balangay boats, dating as early as 320 A.D., have been discovered in Butuan since the 1970s, with the biggest one, dubbed the “Balangay Mother Boat” due to its size, unearthed in 2012 but a decade later, has not been excavated.

The three balangay replicas sailed across Southeast Asia from 2009 to 2011.

“I am proud that I’m one of those who reconstructed the balangays that retraced the maritime history of yore,” Toroganan said in Filipino.

According to him, he and his group of shipwrights have built at least 80 units of “tempel,” or motorized boats with engines of 16 to 32 horse power (hp), and several lansas in the past few decades.

He noted the shipbuilding tradition of Sibutu will not be lost since the younger generation has shown interest to sustain the craft, which has been helping the town’s shipwrights to feed their families and send their children to school.

“I myself taught my three boys how to build wooden-hulled ships,” Toroganan said.

He noted that Sibutu residents inherited the wooden ship building from their ancestors, who according to him, were of Malaysian descent.

Hadji Kuyoh Pajiji, a former mayor here who owned at least 10 lansas in the past years, stressed that the wooden-hulled cargo and passenger ship is safe and sturdy in crossing the high seas.

Only two wooden vessels are currently operational to transport dried seaweeds, the main product of Sibutu, to Zamboanga City. On its return here, the vessel carries consumer goods such as soft drinks, rice, canned goods and hardware products, among others.

A fully-loaded wooden ship powered by a 350-hp engine can take the Sibutu-Zamboanga route in 25 hours, Pajiji said.

A septuagenarian, he originally owned a 16-hp outrigger bought by his father, then a government employee, that he used to buy goods from Semporna, Tawau and Sandakan in Malaysia. Pajiji was just in his 20s then. Sibutu is closer to those Malaysian areas than to Zamboanga City.

Reliable kumpits

“The kumpits built by the shipwrights of Sibutu are reliable. For ages, these are the ones that have been plying the ports of Bongao towards the other island-towns in Tawi-Tawi and Sulu, and with neighboring Malaysia,” he told MindaNews.

Sibutu, which boasts of a nine kilometer stretch of white sand beaches, has 16 villages, and wooden boat builders can be found in each one of them, Pajiji said.

For their mastery of the craft, they can finish a kumpit, even without a blueprint, in six months, he added.

Pajiji said that even small-scale tuna producers in General Santos City, dubbed the “Tuna Capital of the Philippines,” and its neighboring areas have sought Sibutu’s shipwrights to build their fishing boats.

“Our shipbuilding industry continues to thrive because the craft is passed on from generation to generation,” he noted.

Tawi-Tawi is part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), whose regional seat is in Cotabato City. There are daily flights from Zamboanga to Bongao, the provincial capital, and since June, twice weekly from Cotabato to Bongao.

Naguib Sinarimbo, BARMM spokesperson, said the Cotabato-Bongao route will accelerate the exchange of people, goods and services between mainland Cotabato and the landlocked provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur with the island-provinces of Tawi-Tawi and Sulu. Basilan is the other island-province under BARMM.

“Tourists from the Bangsamoro mainland can directly fly and enjoy what Tawi-Tawi can offer,” he said. “Fine white sand beaches, exotic seafoods, rich cultural heritage and friendly people await the curious tourists.”

Showcase

Mayor Nur-Fitra Ahaja said that Sibutu is proud to showcase the boat building industry to tourists visiting and exploring the locality, which also hosts the Sheik Makdum Shrine.

Makdum was the first Arabian missionary to propagate Islam in Mindanao in 1380 and was believed to have been buried here.

Aside from the shipbuilding industry, Sibutu also takes pride in its seaweeds industry and long stretches of powdery white sand beaches, including in its island villages.

Ahaja said that one of the tourism circuits of the town is Sicolan Island, home to the Saluag Lighthouse Station, a proof of the age-old maritime route importance of the locality that could perhaps explain why the shipbuilding industry has been thriving here for centuries. Sicolan Island is 30 minutes away by boat from the mainland of Sibutu.

The town’s other jewel is the Sibutu Strait or Passage, a deep channel about 18 miles wide connecting the Sulu and Sulawesi seas. The strait is used by cargo vessels for international trade between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Some 15,000 ships reportedly use the Sibutu Straight for passage annually.

According to Ahaja, the town has been lighting the way for international and domestic cargo vessels with the Saluag lighthouse, a silent witness to the flourishing of the wooden-hulled shipbuilding industry until now.

Shipbuilding in modern times

Building wooden boats continues to thrive here, even as there is a nationwide move to phase them out.

The Maritime Industry Authority’s (MARINA) 2016 Memorandum Circular on the phase-out nationwide of wooden-hulled vessels, however, has not been fully implemented.

For Bangsamoro Minister of Transportation Dickson Hermoso, the memo circular of the DOTr on the phase-out of wooden-hulled boats “is very hard to implement in the BARMM especially that since time immemorial, the Sulu seafarers use these types of vessels.”

He noted that nationwide, there are at least 9,000 wooden Hulled vessels with a gross tonnage of 3 tons and above in the country. “About 75% are in the BARMM area,” he said, adding that “replacing these wooden-hulled vessels with steel or fiberglass or aluminum hull is very expensive. Price is ranging from 5M pesos and up. A simple boat owner cannot afford it.”

He cited three things that could be done: “Before a clearance to sail is granted, the vessel must have the following. Life vest, radar (GPS), Automatic Identification System (AIS), VHF radio, PCG (Philippine Coast Guard) seaworthiness clearance;

organizing the wooden hulled vessel owners into cooperatives to let them avail of soft-loans to finance the construction of modern vessel; and to recognize that Tausugs and Sama people are “wooden boat craftsmen and seafarers and they are very good but our neighboring countries in the EAGA (East ASEAN Growth Area) are not allowing the entry of these wooden hulled vessels into their waters.” (Bong S. Sarmiento with a report by Carolyn O. Arguillas / MindaNews)