KOCHI: Abhilash Tomy scripted history in April when he finished second in the Golden Globe Race, which is considered the world’s toughest oceanic yacht race. The feat, as monumental as it is, tastes better when one also has a nibble of history. For, the former Navy commodore’s nearly 30,000 nautical mile-long voyage is simply the latest chapter in a long story that had been decades in the making.
For the bigger picture, one must sail back in time, to 1987, to Indira Point, where two men stood -- the late Rear Admiral Arun Auditto and Commander (retd) Vijay Vadhera. The vast horizon that stretched before them was scant, save for one very out-of-place object.
Swaying in the blue-green waters here was Sleipner, a French yacht. On enquiring with the locals, Cdr Vadhera learned that it was confiscated for transporting contraband into Indian waters.
Now, this vessel would have meant nothing to the officers had it not been for a singular event that transpired three months ago. In December 1986, Trishna, a yacht carrying members of the Indian Army, had passed Indira Point on their final leg in a voyage around the world. The incident had left the Navy red-faced.
Now, with the Sleipner in its possession, the Navy looked to settle scores. Soon, plans were afoot to replicate a similar journey. Cdr Vadhera, who had sailed the yacht to Visakhapatnam, was named the skipper. “It was a grand plan,” he recalls. “The Navy had not done anything of this scale before. I was put in charge as I had some hands-on experience in sailing.”
Scepticism hung like a dark cloud. After much ado, the yacht, renamed Samudra, was flagged off from Visakhapatnam on September 28, 1988. The crew’s inexperience was evident early on. Just two days into the voyage, the yacht was in the eye of a storm. “We were navigating without any modern gadgetry. We forgot to take note that low pressure was forming in the Bay of Bengal,” says Cdr Vadhera.
However, the yacht endured the storm, which lasted for three days. “Save for two torn sails, which we fixed with patch repairs, the boat was solid, and we continued on,” he adds. A Navy document accessed by TNIE fills in the rest of the story. “During the storm, Cdr Vadhera, disregarding personal safety, carried out emergency patch repairs on the sails, a task, if not completed on time, would have resulted in a catastrophe,” reads the note.
The journey that would be the impetus for the Navy’s sailing expeditions would not have leapfrogged to where it is today had it not been for Cdr Vadhera’s resolve. For his courage, he was awarded the Nau Sena medal. Samudra completed the voyage on December 4, 1989, lighting another beacon in the history of Indian maritime adventure. “Until that point, the Navy had spared little thought to sailing expeditions. The priority was to build up the naval strength following the wars in the decades prior,” notes Commodore Srikant B Kesnur (retd), a naval historian.
This was fertile ground for the late Vice Admiral M P Awati, whose persistence was as intense as Cdr Vadhera’s resolve. After retiring in 1983, the war veteran relentlessly wrote to the Navy chief to set up a sailing ecosystem. “He had been harbouring the idea since his time in England, where he chanced upon a book -- Sailing Alone Around the World, a memoir by Joshua Slocum,” says Vice Admiral (retd) I C Rao. With both Cdr Vadhera and R.Adm Auditto as allies, his pursuit gained momentum. But the Navy was an unwieldy beast, and the idea of circumnavigation, was too strange for the 80s.
Despite Samudra’s success, it took another 15 years for the cogs to turn. In 2006, V.Adm Awati’s letter received a rare reply -- from former Navy chief Arun Prakash -- greenlighting the project. “The building blocks were finally falling into place,” recalls Captain (retd) D K Sharma, who was the Navy spokesperson then. Only one block remained -- someone to execute it all.
Enter Captain Dilip Donde (retd). “I liked sailing. I was then the XO (second-in-command) of Tarangini, the Navy’s sail training vessel. We had done a few expeditions, so I volunteered,” he says. But the journey that lay before him was unlike any he had experienced. What compounded the matter was VAdm Awati’s condition — the boat must be built in India. “No Indian company had constructed an ocean-faring sailboat back then. But the boatbuilder Ratnakar Dandekar, whose Aquarius Shipyard in Goa had won the Navy’s contract, poured his heart and soul into the work,” recalls Captain Donde.
The boat, Mhadei, was ready in 2008, and the following year, on August 19, 2009, Captain Donde’s circumnavigation journey commenced from Mumbai. There were four stops planned along the way.
“All because of the Navy’s insistence. The sun had yet to dispel the scepticism,” he adds. But what troubled him most at sea was, surprisingly, paperwork. “Forms of this, forms of that... I was drowning in them. So, I requested the Navy to assign someone to help me. They sent Abhilash Tomy,” says Captain Donde.
It was the start of an exciting collaboration. “Tomy had a spark,” recalls Captain Sharma. “Everyone saw his potential, including the Navy. The cogs turned.” When Captn Donde sailed Mhadei into Mumbai harbour on May 19, 2010, he became the first Indian national to complete a solo circumnavigation around the world. But before this journey was even complete, plans were already afoot for the next.
Commander Tomy would do one better -- without the stops. “One can only marvel at V.Adm Awati’s clarity of thought,” says Cmdr Srikant. “He executed it step by step and built an entire ecosystem within the span of two decades.”
On March 31, 2013, Cmdr Tomy became the first Indian and the 79th person to complete a solo, non-stop, unassisted voyage around the world. “But V.Adm Awati was not finished. He wanted to see a woman sail solo,” says Captain Sharma.
“Then, women Navy officers had no experience of going to the sea. So the Navy was very sceptical. It decided to send a team instead,” says Captain Donde, who was in charge of training. Despite growing up in the hills, Vartika Joshi harboured a love for the sea. That made her join the Navy. “However, I was totally ignorant of the fact that women Navy officers were not taken to the sea,” Lieutenant Commander (retd) Joshi.
She signed up for sail training exercises and was part of the peninsular voyage that Captain Donde undertook to celebrate Mhadei’s sailing milestone. “It was after this journey that I learned that the Navy was putting together a circumnavigation mission. I wasted no time to sign up,” says Lt Cdr Joshi.
Soon, a six-member crew was put together, and unsung hero Ratnakar Dandekar was tasked again to build Tarini, a replica of Mhadei, but with facilities to accommodate a larger crew.
In 2017, the women set sail on the Tarini. Like any voyage, this, too, was fraught with dangers. “We ran out of water and had to wait days for the rains to replenish our supply. Later, in the pacific ocean, we were battered by 70-knot wind and 10-meter waves,” Lt Cdr Joshi recalls. ‘ “In the second leg of the journey, we saw the Southern Lights. The whole sky was lit green, dancing. On another occasion, it was the ocean that was lit, by bioluminescence.”
On November 3, just months after Tarini had returned home, the father of Indian circumnavigation, V.Adm M P Awati, breathed his last. “He was a visionary, dedicated his entire life to the Navy,” says Captain Donde. Cmdr Tomy, too, shares similar sentiments. Following his accident in GGR 2018, when everyone advised Tomy to slow down, V.Adm Awati urged him to keep it going. “Get back there, finish the race!” the admiral is seen roaring in a video. The young officer did so.
Now, in the wake of Cmdr Tomy’s historic feat, more exciting plans are afoot. “Two women officers have been shortlisted to undertake an around-the-world journey,” informs Lt Cdr Joshi. They are Lt Cdr Dilna K and Lt Cdr Roopa Alagirisamy. “The appetite of the Navy has grown large. It can’t stop now. That’s the Navy,” says Captain Sharma.
No horizon out of reach
It was the memoir by Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail around the world alone, that set the late Vice Admiral M P Awati on a path to build the sailing ecosystem in India. His sheer persistence tamed the otherwise unyieldly Navy. VAdm Awati is the father of circumnavigation missions in India.