NAGAPATTINAM: For 14-year-old Sanjeevan A, high winds at sea were not something to fear but a thing to chase. After barely two months of training, the young sailor from Nagapattinam won the Optimist Green Fleet at the FOTNA Cup held on September 19 and 20, thriving when the winds picked up on the final day. “When the high wind arrived, I started hiking and it was thrilling. The competition was not in focus for me, but sailing,” he said with a giggle.
“Everyone said we, the students from Nagapattinam, wouldn’t win. But we proved them wrong. All those talks turned into praise. I felt happy that we could make Nagapattinam something people would talk about in such competing spaces,” said Sanjeevan.
For 13-year-old Anushan S, who finished third, the open sea had initially been a source of fear. “I was scared of the open sea. I am a fisherman, but I had not gone into the sea with my father on a boat. When I went into the open sea on a yacht for the first time, it was scary, like I was all alone. Though I wore a life jacket, as the days went on and I kept practising, the sea became an excitement rather than fear,” he said.
Sanjeevan and Anushan, who hail from the fishing communities of Akkaraipettai and Nambiyar Nagar, respectively, are both Class 9 students at government higher secondary schools. Krishivant P and Balachandran S also performed well, finishing fourth and sixth, respectively. They were among seven students selected from the Nagapattinam Yacht Club to participate in the FOTNA Cup based on their performance and progress during training.
They were all trained by Shubham Pillai, 31, from Pune, a former Navy sailor and an Asian Championship Sailor. The Nagapattinam district administration and Nagapattinam Yacht Club, in association with the Royal Madras Yacht Club (RMYC), have been providing Optimist sailing training to school students aged below 15 at the Nagapattinam port for the past two and a half months.
The training is held on weekdays from 6 am to 8 am, and also on weekends, with qualified instructors providing regular coaching. Students from government schools are offered free coaching for two months and will pay Rs 2,500 a month for sailing classes.
Students from private schools will have to pay the same. Six of the 16 students currently training at the Nagapattinam Yacht Club were selected for the FOTNA Cup. For all six, the competition was their first major sailing event outside the district.
The FOTNA Cup, organised in association with the RMYC and named after the Flag Officer Commanding Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Naval Area (FOTNA), features multiple sailing categories, including the Optimist class for young sailors. The competition gave the Nagapattinam trainees an opportunity to compete alongside young sailors from other institutions and training centres.
The sailing initiative aims to introduce the sport to young students in Nagapattinam and create opportunities for those with an aptitude for the sport to compete at higher levels. The Nagapattinam Yacht Club is being developed as a platform to identify and nurture young sailing talent in the district, with the long-term aim of taking students from grassroots training to State, national and higher-level competitions.
The sport has sparked ambitions in both Sanjeevan and Anushan, with the experience encouraging them to pursue sailing further. While Anushan dreams of becoming a ship captain, Sanjeevan hopes to balance academics and life with his passion for sports and sailing. Both now aspire to achieve greater heights in sailing.
(For further enquiries about classes, contact Veerathangamani at +91 6369 532 432)