Sibutu island preserves art of building wooden-hulled boats

SIBUTU, Tawi-Tawi – 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.

Toroganan learned and mastered the skills of wooden boat building from his father, uncles and their cousins, by watching them at work. A lansa loaded with passengers and cargo maneuvers to dock at the Chinese Pier in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi.MindaNews photo by BONG S. SARMIENTO“I am proud that I’m one of those who reconstructed the balangays that retraced the maritime history of yore,” Toroganan said in Filipino.

A tempel, a small motorized boat measuring at least 20 feet long, under construction in Sibutu, Tawi-Tawi. MindaNews photo by BONG S. SARMIENTO 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.

“Our shipbuilding industry continues to thrive because the craft is passed on from generation to generation,” he noted. Makdum was the first Arabian missionary to propagate Islam in Mindanao in 1380 and was believed to have been buried here. 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.

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