The lepa boat is a plank-built boat of the Sama-Bajau people, built up from a shallow dugout keel and used as a houseboat, a fishing boat and a cargo vessel. It belongs to the sea-going communities that moved across the waters between the Philippines, Malaysia and eastern Indonesia, and its design reflects that way of life. Typical lepa are between about 9 and 15 metres long, with a low, broad hull that suited shallow reef water and a deck large enough for a family to live on.
Who built and used the lepa boat
The lepa is the work of the Sama-Bajau, a people known as skilled fishers, traders and boatbuilders. Among the seagoing Sama Dilaut, the lepa was traditionally a home as well as a boat. Families lived aboard for much of the year, moving between fishing grounds and sheltered anchorages. Most Sama have since moved onto land or into towns, and today the lepa is used mainly for fishing and cargo.
The boatbuilding skill itself was widely shared. In the 1960s, Sama-Bajau builders were making around fifteen different boat types, which shows how much knowledge a community needed to keep a fleet running. The lepa is one of the most recognisable of these types, and its design answers the demands of the water it was built for.
Sizes and the family of lepa
Typical lepa measure about 9.1 to 15.2 metres in length, around 1.5 to 2.1 metres in width, and stand about 1.5 metres high from keel to gunwale. Smaller boats were towed behind larger lepa. Family lepa often tow smaller boats, such as the buggoh or birau. The size gives a lepa enough space for sleeping, eating and storing gear, while still being light enough to be handled by a small crew.
Larger vessels called sapit or kumpit are the trade ships of the same tradition. They can reach 15 to 37 metres and were used for trade and deep-sea fishing. The lepa is therefore one member of a family of boats rather than a single fixed design, and a builder who knew the lepa could usually move up to the larger forms.
The keel and the planks
The keel of a lepa comes from a shallow dugout, a hollowed log called tadas or lunas. The dugout is the spine of the boat, and planks are built up on either side of it. The strakes, the planks along each side, are narrower than the keel, so the hull grows outward from its centre line in a series of overlapping bands. This is the same basic approach used by many plank boats in the region, and it gives the hull a strong backbone while keeping the sides light.
Three sideboards run from the stern along the top edge of the hull, and they stop short of the bow, leaving a gap at the front. The hull tapers sharply toward both ends. Parts are joined with wooden dowels and fibre lashings rather than nails, which makes the hull more flexible in a seaway. A lepa that is well built will twist a little in rough water and recover its shape, which matters when a boat is loaded with fish and water.
Modern builders have adapted the method. On some boats the keel is still a single carved piece, while other parts are joined from smaller timbers. Where large timber has become scarce, some builders now use commercial plywood for parts of the hull, which changes the look and weight of the boat but keeps the basic shape.
The house, the sail and the deck
A lepa carries a detachable house in the middle of the hull. The house has a removable floor and a roof made of woven nipa palm leaves on Y-shaped posts, and it covers less than half the length of the boat. Inside, a family sleeps, eats and stores its gear. A portable cooking hearth sits at the stern, so that the living area can be kept away from the fire and the wood.
The roof of the house can be taken off, which turns the lepa into an open sailing boat. A single sail is set on a removable mast, and the boat can also be paddled or poled in shallow water. Modern lepa almost always carry motors, but the sail and oars remain part of the design, and the boat’s low bow and stern help with netting, poling and rowing close to the reef.
Lepa have no outriggers. Many traditional boats of the region are fitted with outrigger floats for stability, but the lepa relies on its shape and its deck. The bow and stern sit low to the water, which makes it easier to work nets and poles from the front of the boat. A visitor who looks at a lepa will notice this flat, wide profile, which is quite different from the sharp, narrow form of many island canoes.
Carved decoration and the bowsprit
Lepa are decorated with carved designs known as okil or ukkil. The carving appears on the boat’s fittings and on the parts that are most visible from the shore. The bow often carries a large carved bowsprit called the jungal, which projects forward and gives the boat its characteristic outline. The decoration does not change the boat’s function, but it shows the pride of the owner and the skill of the builder.
Some owners add decoration for festivals. For the Regatta Lepa, owners fit sails, pennants and flags with okir-style designs, which makes the boat visually distinct from its everyday form. The festival turns the working boat into a display piece for a few days, and then the boat goes back to fishing.
Life aboard and the boat as a home
For the Sama Dilaut, the lepa was a full-time home. Families lived on the water in small clusters of houseboats that moved together. The bow is an elevated platform where the head fisher watches for fish, and it is also used for dancing at weddings and celebrations. The right side of the hull is treated as a sacred place, and ritual activity takes place there.
A young man’s family would traditionally supply him with a lepa before marriage, so that the couple could fish and live independently. When a person died, the boat could be dismantled and used as the coffin. These practices show how closely the boat was tied to family life, from the start of a marriage to its end.
Origins and how the lepa changed
The origins of the lepa are uncertain. Some Sama informants said that boatwrights of one group first made the lepa for trade, and that the Sama Dilaut later adopted it. Other observers have suggested that the boat may only date back to the early twentieth century. Early photographs from the Semporna area show mainly small outrigger vessels, so the lepa’s rise as a house boat may be a fairly recent development in the region’s history.
Its use has also changed. During the twentieth century, the larger engine-driven kumpit increasingly took over from the lepa in Sama Dilaut life. Government road-building along some coasts destroyed the reef moorings where houseboat communities had anchored, and conflict in parts of the region pushed many families into houses on land. Many became wage labourers. The lepa is therefore a boat that shows a change in the way Sama life was organised as well as a piece of craftsmanship.
The Regatta Lepa and the boat festival
The Regatta Lepa is an annual festival in Semporna, Sabah, that celebrates Sama-Bajau boatbuilding. It began in the 1990s, became a national festival in the following decade, and is held each year in April. Boats are prepared with sails and pennants and raced in front of a large crowd, and the festival draws many visitors, most of them from Malaysia. For a visitor, it is one of the few places where you can see the lepa in its full decorated form.
The Philippines has also added a lepa festival to the celebrations of the Tawi-Tawi province, which recognises the Sama-Bajau heritage of the islands. Together, these festivals show how the boat has moved from a working necessity to a symbol of identity for the communities that still build it.
Seeing lepa and related boats
The best way to understand the lepa is to see it in water. The page on the Bajau sea nomads covers the people and their villages, which is the context in which the boat makes sense. For a broader view of traditional craft, the page on the jukung outrigger boat shows a different answer to the same problem of stability on open water. Set beside each other, the two boats show how different coastal communities solved the problem of working on the sea.
Another useful comparison is the peledang, the sailing whale boat of Lamalera in Lembata, which shares the idea of a wide, purpose-built hull for a particular kind of fishing. The pinisi schooner page covers the larger sailing tradition of South Sulawesi, where the Bugis and Makassar builders developed ships for long-distance trade.
What the lepa shows about coastal life
The lepa is a boat built around a family’s daily needs. Its low, flat hull suits shallow reef water. Its removable house turns a fishing boat into a home. Its sail and paddles give it options when the engine is not available. And its carved bow shows that even a working boat can carry a community’s pride.
A visitor who learns to read a lepa will see the marks of many years of practical use: the wear on the gunwales, the patched lashings, the woven roof and the carefully carved bow. Each part tells a small piece of the story of the people who built and lived with the boat.
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