SARIMANOK outrigger

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aukepalmhof
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SARIMANOK outrigger

Post by aukepalmhof » Fri Oct 20, 2017 8:33 pm

In 1985 Bob Hobman built a. outrigger canoe the SARIMANOK made of a ghio tree and sails made entirely of vegetable elements, not a single nail was used. The outrigger was built mostly after plans of a Filipino “vinta” model.
Not any navigational instruments were on board, and the crew relied only on the stars to set course.
The name given to the outrigger was SARIMANOK she was named after a Sarimanok bird in Filipino Mindanao mythology, a reincarnation of a goddess who fell in love with a mortal man. Today it symbolized in the Filipino wealth and prestige.
From two books of which the quotations I got from Mr. Jung (with thanks) comes the following.

Madagascar - The Eighth Continent: Life, Death and Discovery in a Lost World by Peter Tyson pages 257-258.
I quote:
To find out, a Briton named Bob Hobman decided to build a replica of the king of boat the first Malagasy might have used and, in the manner of the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, try to sail it from Java to Madagascar, making no landfalls, using no modern navigation aids, and subsisting solely on foods the ancient Malagasy might have eaten. The 60-foot double outrigger canoe was built entirely of wood and bamboo, with palm-weave sails and rattan bindings instead of nails; it had no motor, radio or sextant. On June 3, 1985, the SARIMANOK, as the vessel was christened, set sail from Java. “They had an unending, horrible voyage,” Dewar told me. “There were problems with the boat. More or less continuous high seas, strong winds, and frequent storms. All the time they’re filming this damn thing, filming the boat falling to pieces and so forth.” After one stop on Cocos (Keeling) Island to let off a sick crew member (and bring on some tinned food), Hobman’s crew, against all odds, managed to go the distance to Madagascar in 49 days. But by then they had lost their ability to steer the craft, and they drifted past the northern tip of the island and into the Mozambique Channel. “On the boat they had this sealed, watertight container with a button,” Dewar told me. “If they pushed the button, it would turn on a radio beacon that would identify where they were and would send out a distress signal.” “Just like the original Malagasy might have had,” I said. “Exactly. Well, they finally gave up und pushed the button.” A French coast guard ship came out from the Comoros and towed them back to the island of Mayotte, where they promptly saddled with a hefty bill for the rescue. The crew then hired a local boat to tow the ailing craft to Madagascar, where, on September 5, the SARIMANOK finally came to rest on Nosy Be, on the beach by the Holiday Inn, “About a year later, a group of these people came back to try to raise money in Madagascar- which strikes one as a somewhat humorous effort- to refurbish the SARIMANOK and memorialize it,” Dewar said. “On of them gave a lecture in Diego Suarez while I was in town. He delivered it in English, with simultaneous translation, to a crowd of about 60, at least half of whom were under the age of 12. I think they left disappointed in terms of finding anyone to take care of the SARIMANOK.” But Jean-Aimé Rakotoarisoa, a leading Malagasy archeologist and a close friend of Dewar’s, had a different take on what the SARIMANOK voyagers had accomplished, Dewar told me. “They had done marvelous work, Jean-Aimé felt, solving problems that we archeologists had not been able to solve before. We now know that the first place settled in Madagascar was the Holiday Inn in Nosy Be, and we know that Americans must have settled the island first, because there we have proof: the built the Holiday Inn.”
Unquote.

Classic Ships of Islam: From Mesopotamia to the Indian Ocean von Dionysius Agius, page 103
I quote:
People of southeastern origin settled in Madagascar and the Comoro Islands in the second half of the first millennium CE; the language of Madagascar today is Malagasy of an Austronesian family with strong ties to Ma’anyan and the Borito languages of Borneo. How they reached Madagascar is interesting and something which has intrigued a number of scholars. One voyage, undertaken by Bob Hobman and his crew on 6 August 1985, proved that Neolithic navigators could have crossed over from Indonesia to Madagascar on an outrigger canoe, the SARIMANOK, a hollowed-out trunk of a huge ghio tree with sails woven from plant fibres. The voyage lasted 63 days.
Unquote.

The SARIMANOK is now in the Oceanographic Museum of Nosy Be, Malagasy.

Malagasy Republic 1987 60f, 150f sg 617/18
Cocos (Keeling) Islands 1987 36c sg160, scott?
Attachments
sarimanok.jpg
1987 sarimanok.jpg
1987_SARIMANOK (2).jpg
1987_SARIMANOK (3).jpg

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