THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Nine-year-old Noah Joseph is hardly visible on the catamaran he’s sailing as an afternoon breeze blows across the waters of the Vembanad lake. Only the sounds of fluttering sails and his Dutch sailing partner Roel Vlemmings’ instructions (“to follow the wind”) break the silence. As the yellow and blue of their boat bobs on the backwaters, the duo finds a willing audience in fishermen readying nets for the evening’s catch. Slowly, the wind picks up and the boat glides, helmed by people who’ve found their calling in the waters and their place beneath the sails.
The scene of all this action, every weekend, is the coast around Cheppanam, a small island that is home to the Ernakulam Sailing Association (ESA), an off-shoot of the Kerala Yachting Association (KYA), and the Global Sailing Association (GSA). With over 135 lifetime members, ESA’s interest lies in encouraging parents to hit the waters, hoping the kids will follow. It also organises sailing competitions and handpicks children from coastal belts to develop the innate kinship they share with the backwaters.
GSA, based at the Sailing Club House, promotes sailing as a hobby for the family and watersports like kayaking and zorbing, apart from hosting training camps for children thrice a year. In all, both have their hearts set on Kochiites not stopping at the edge of the water.
Plain Sailing
For starters, the activity is solely determined by the presence of winds and by the science of it. The hours between noon and four pm, from October to May, are ideal for sailing. “It is the most eco-friendly activity. Once you are on a boat, it’s just you and the water. You depend on yourself to read the winds and change the course accordingly. Sailing develops the personality, teaches responsibility, and is slowly catching up as a lifestyle sport, ” outlines Punnose Elias, secretary, ESA.
Every weekend, members line up boats that go by the names of Optimist (for children up to 15 years), Enterprise (a two-man dinghy) and Laser (Olympic class)—the standard version of which will be sailed at the yachting competition of the National Games scheduled at Munambam in February. There’s also the sturdy and steady GO-cat for adults. ESA president, Joe Nejedly, manufactures them at his Eroor-based boat building business, Praga Marine, and has named them after his sons Gregory and Oliver.
The GO-cat, ideal for family sailing, comes at a price of `1.75 lakh while the Laser costs between `4.5-`6 lakh depending on its type (there are variants for children, adults and girls). Proudly holding up ESA as the second most active club in the country, after the Tamil Nadu Sailing Association, Nejedly informs that some Sundays are race days and overnight expeditions are taken out to Kottayam and Kumarakom.
With a lifetime membership fee of `50,000 per family and an annual fee of `10,000, the association holds around five tournaments each year and the member families bond over monthly trips to mangroves in the area where the ‘rough and tough’ sailors lunch with birds. Going by the policy of memberships through referencing, GSA takes in families at a lifetime fee of `1.5 lakh and charges non-members `500 and `300 for half an hour of sailing and kayaking, respectively.
Gathering Wind
As far as the popularity of the sport in Kochi goes, O C Thomas, founder-member of GSA, says the city is yet to get an exclusive sailing culture. “The number of people out on the waters is disproportionate to the population, but the signs are encouraging,” he adds. In people like Vlemmings, who took to sailing three years ago after a friend brought him to ESA , sailing may find its sustenance. Add to it the ilk of Dr Aymen Khumri, who believes that the sport is a good family activity and disciplines children. “Also, it is good to use something which is natural (like water),” adds her son, Joseph, a student of The Choice School.
For Cheppanam lads like Christon Jude and friend Sairam Mohandas, sailing is an extension of their lives on the backwaters. The free training that ESA provides offers them a shot at the nationals—a chance that they may not have had with staples like cricket and football. Amidst all this, the circumnavigation feat of captain Abhilash Tomy and the many travels of late professor V Radhakrishnan, son of Nobel laureate C V Raman, offer a lesson or two. For inspiration, there’s KYA’s success story of training Vypeen boys, Prince Noble and Manu Francis, who hail from a fishing community, to make it to the national championships. The boys will be competing for the state in February for the last time before they join the Army.
Changing Course
While international events like the Volvo Ocean race and the Vasco da Gama rally have brought sailing to the fore, the sport has to weather quite a few rough patches. “With no government help, sailing is surviving on the goodwill of a few individuals. Unless at least 10 districts in Kerala have district sailing associations, state bodies like the KYA will not be eligible for funds and children who represent the state in sailing will not be granted leaves and extra marks. A sailing academy of our own is the ultimate dream,” Nejedly says.
There’s also the need for educational institutions and corporates to explore the possibilities of sailing, insists George Loval, secretary, KYA, apart from better administration at the Kochi International Marina. “Sailors maintain a log and if anything negative is documented, it speaks ill of the country in maritime circles,” he adds.
As for the biggest obstacle to sailing—fear of water—Karl Damschen, a German restoration architect and kayaking enthusiast, and Thiruvananthapuram native for 33 years, has the answer. “Educate people through children. Start young and start with swimming,” says the 72-year-old, adding with a smile that he is building a 50-metre Olympics standard pool in Kochi. It’s all about staying afloat, now.
Aye Captain
Life definitely begins at 60, if Rajen Shah’s passion is anything to go by. In the last four years since he retired as a director with Garden Silk, the self-taught sailor from Surat built his catamaran, Golden Cat, sailed solo from his hometown to Lakshwadeep, penned a journal on his love for sailing and clocked 8,000 nautical miles. Built from scratch at Bilimora, the 34x27-foot catamaran is made primarily of wood and has a cabin that can house six people, a kitchen with a stove, dining table and refrigerator, and a washroom. Journeying to Maldives at present, the double-hulled boat finds itself in the hands of a seasoned sailor who holds a RYA Yachtmaster Coastal certification (advanced sailing). As one of the handful long-distance sailors in the country, apart from Kishore Mariwala (Marico Ltd) and Jamshyd Godrej, Shah believes sailing needs to be identified as a pleasure craft. “While shipping and fishing have legislations, sailing has none,” he outlines. Another complaint: the tedious paperwork that an Indian sailor is required to complete before he is permitted to head to Lakshwadeep — an island that is in Indian waters and a popular sailing destination. But that has not stopped Shah from plotting a trip to the island in February, after he and his three friends return from Maldives.
20 Years of Coasting Along
Jim Den Hartog was all of seven when a V-2 rocket fired by the Allies hit close to his house in Leidschendam, Netherlands, during World War II. He lost a leg and his brother, an arm. His family of five got on a boat to Canada in 1951 and “that was my first sailing experience,” recollects the 77-year-old, sitting atop his yacht, Gaia, docked at the Kochi International Marina. His yacht shows no signs of wear and tear, despite the 20-year-long journey that she has been on—across half the world—with Hartog and his partner of 37 years, Helen Den Dekker. The former employees of the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited built the boat in their backyard over 10 years and set sail, after putting up their house in Canada for sale in 1995, and have made the seas their home ever since. Travelling to places like the Caribbean, Germany, Portugal and New Zealand (their favourite), he admits, “The only time we halted for long (three years) is in Malaysia because of the piracy threat in the north-west Indian Ocean.” Having reached Kochi in May, the duo is bidding their time before the north-east trade winds pick up and they have smooth sailing to the Maldives and from there to Madagascar. All for living like locals wherever they anchor, the couple swears by the ferry and love their snack time at Royal Bakery on Marine Drive. The biggest change, ever since they began sailing, Dekker says, is the advent of the internet and GPS, which has reduced the need to photocopy maps and plot real-time positions on a chart. With the winds and seasons largely determining where they are sailing to, Hartog insists that they are not finished yet. “Very few people have kept at it for as long as us. This is the storyline,” he smiles, holding close a copy of The Occupied Garden, his daughter Kristen Den Hartog’s book on where he comes from.