What It Takes to Build a Great Phinisi: The Story of Celestia

Every dry season, new phinisi projects begin on the beaches of South Sulawesi. Keels are laid, ribs rise, owners dream. Far fewer of those hulls ever reach the sea as the yacht somebody actually pictured. The ones that do have five things in common: time, patience, funding, quality standards and dedication. Celestia is what it looks like when all five line up.

A Lockdown Phone Call

The idea begins in 2021, with borders closed. Jason Tabalujan, a private equity fund manager in Jakarta with time on his hands, flew to Sulawesi and drove south from Makassar along palm-lined roads to Bulukumba, where boatbuilders have raised ironwood hulls for generations, a craft UNESCO recognized in 2017. He watched men climb near-vertical hulls swinging iron hammers, and called his sister in New York with what he admitted was a crazy idea.

Jasmine Chong is a fashion designer with her own label, built in an atelier in New York's Garment District after years at houses like Marchesa and Tory Burch. Her first reaction was the sensible one: she designs dresses, not ships. But travel bans make dreamers of everyone. Soon she was deep in boat research, on nonstop video calls, imagining linens and textiles. She would later tell TIME, “Designing a ship is like dressing someone.”

Why Indonesia, Why Bulukumba

The destination was never in doubt. Exploring East Indonesia while the borders were closed, Jason had concluded that no other country could rival it for marine life, colour, coral and raw beauty. Bulukumba supplied the rest of the logic: a community with a generations-old, UNESCO-listed tradition of raising ironwood ships by hand, on the same island where the siblings' grandparents had lived. The journey to the yard is its own commitment. Jasmine described it to Travel and Leisure as a two and a half hour flight from Jakarta followed by about five hours on narrow one-lane roads.

The division of labour settled itself early. Jason jokes that his sister got the creative gene while he is colour blind and better on a spreadsheet. The project would quietly change how they saw each other: he discovered his little sister was not so little, and she discovered her finance brother had a sharp eye for hospitality.

The Family as the Brief

What made the project serious was not the market. It was the separation. With Jasmine in New York, Jason in Jakarta and their parents in Malaysia, the pandemic had scattered a close family across three countries. The yacht became the answer to a simple question: where do we all come back together? Jasmine pictured her parents, her sister's family and the whole table gathered in one saloon, a space, as she put it to Travel and Leisure, “with people who feel like home.”

Time, and a Yard Five Hours from the Airport

Building in Bulukumba is not a phone-it-in exercise. Jason traveled from Jakarta to the yard on weekends to stand with the builders, on the island where the siblings' grandparents had lived. Jasmine joined by video call, then flew in herself in 2022 and found the visit unexpectedly emotional: the hull filling out, as she described it, like a person taking shape, the way a dress comes alive in the right fabric.

Funding, Fully Committed

The money question has sunk more phinisi dreams than any reef. Here it had a clean answer: Jason funded her alone, completely, and did not hedge. He kept the project from his parents until it was past the point of stopping. “I waited until I sunk half my money into it,” he told Boat International. Then he brought them to the yard at sunset, climbed onto the roof of the hull with them, and asked them to picture her at sea.

The Standard, Held Everywhere

Quality on a wooden ship is decided a hundred times a day, and the siblings staffed the decisions carefully. Naval architecture came from Tresno Seery, son of Patti Seery, the pioneer who built Silolona and helped invent luxury phinisi charter in Indonesia. Interiors came from Deirdre Renniers of Cape Town, briefed to design something closer to a private residence than a charter product. The siblings insisted on a traditional phinisi rig, two masts and seven sails, over a motor yacht in costume.

And the craft stayed Indonesian end to end: hand-woven rattan panelling from Java, hand-glazed Balinese tiles like the ones in the siblings' childhood home, and tropical toile textiles Jasmine designed herself, made by Indonesian makers throughout.

The Ring in the Keel

She launched in 2022 the old way. Nearly the whole village came out, every builder with their family. A gold ring was set into the keel to serve as her navel, a meal of delicacies wrapped in banana leaves was eaten on the ground by hand, and then ten men eased her from the beach into the water with chain blocks, little by little, over several days. Jasmine watched children chasing each other around the hull and thought: the first of many happy moments aboard. At the launch she said that from the first piece of wood, the family knew “this would be a special phinisi.”

What the Patience Bought

First charters came in 2023, a year after launch, which is the final ingredient: the patience not to rush her out half-finished. The care that went into the build is exactly what a guest feels aboard today, in the weight of a door, the glaze of a tile, the crew's pride in a ship many of them watched being born. The siblings say their goal is to help more people fall in love with Indonesia, one slow voyage at a time. The boat makes their case better than they do.

Her story continues in the story of life aboard her.

Celestia is available for private charter through Indo Yachts. Her yacht page has her cabins, seasons and itineraries.