While sailing in the Indonesian seas, one always meets one of those majestic traditional schooners at full sail. Those are the Bugis Pinisi, – or sometimes written Phinisi – which have for hundreds of years plied these waters journeying as far away as Malacca, Burma, Vietnam, and Australia. Today one can see these large traditional boats at anchor along the Sunda Kelapa harbor in Jakartan on the Ujung wharf of Surabaya unloading timber from Kalimantan, or at the Paotere harbor in Makassar, South Sulawesi, or in the small port of Labuan Bajo on Flores. The Bugis along with the Mandar, both of South Sulawesi, are master shipbuilders and excellent mariners.

These pinisi boats have transported the Bugis far through the archipelago, and several have further settled on Java, Kalimantan, Sumatra, Papua, and the Nusatenggara islands. The Bugis weren’t only admired as master seafarers but were also greatly worried as pirates. At the eighteenth century when the Dutch colonized their homeland, many aristocrats spanned to Malaya and Kalimantan. The Sultans of Kutai at East Kalimantan and of Johor and Selangor in Malaysia are of Bugis origin. The original Bugis heartland is in Luwu on the Bay of Bone, wherein the 13th. And 14th. Century flourished a sizable Bugis kingdom. Here is the great literary work of Bugis I La Galigo, was written which relates the history of the origins of the Bugis in more than 6, 000 pages.

The Bugis pinisi of 100 tons to 200 tons today still play an important role in traditional transportation and inter-island trade. At the nineteenth century, Bugis perahus were loaded with Chinese and European manufactured products from Singapore carrying them too far away Dobo in the Aru Islands in East Nusatenggara stopping in distant ports along the road. From the Indonesian islands, they gathered birds-of paradise feathers, sandalwood, spices, pepper and gold to offer them at substantial profits in Singapore to Chinese and Indians merchants.

Today, the Bugis pinisi carry all kinds of the cargo of wood to cement, house tiles, rice, sugar, up to motorbikes and boxes of cigarettes to sell them to the Islanders on the archipelago. Nowadays too, the Bugis pinisi are refitted to function as distinctive traditional liveaboards for sailors to pristine locations, particularly on the eastern Indonesian islands. These sturdy vessels today complete with cabins, kitchens, and toilet for the accommodation of members of diving expeditions to Komodo Park in Flores and Raja Ampat National Park near Sorong, in West Papua. The present-day large Bugis pinisi is said to be partly copied from the western schooner of the mid-nineteenth century. The pinisi is a bigger version from the former Bugis perahus used, known as the perahu patorani and the padewakang. The Bugis pinisi today have tall ketch replacements of seven sails, including two topsails and two high masts.