Navy Commander Abhilash Tomy begins his road to recovery, AMRITA DUTTAin Ernakulam & SMITA NAIR in Goa recount a love affair with the sea that began as a child, the journey that brought him to the race, and the boat that fought against 80 knots-per-hour winds. Out of hospital, Abhilash will head first to his vessel, to Thuriya.
On a globe, the piercing blue of whose oceans is nothing like the grey fury of the real thing, he plotted the journey of his son Abhilash Tomy, as he became the first Indian to circumnavigate the world alone in 2013, without assistance and without halting anywhere. “Every day, I marked where he had reached. This is where he started, from the Gateway of India in Bombay,” he says, tracing the long, wavy line he had drawn on it with a pen as he sat in his house in Ernakulam, Kerala. “And that’s the route, the Pacific, Cape Leeuwin, Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope….”
Abhilash’s mentor Dilip Donde (left), Tomy and Thuriya maker Ratnakar Dandekar, in the boat while it was being made; From the family album. Abhilash works as a maritime reconnaissance pilot, and sky is another frontier on his to-do list; Abhilash reaches Mumbai on April 6, 2013, to become the first Indian to circle the globe non-stop; Abhilash with Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, whose feat in 1968, sailing non-stop around the globe, he was trying to replicate; A photo, of ‘Day 93’, from the book 151 Solitary Days at Sea Sailing Non-Stop Around the Globe, written by Abhilash after his 2013 circumnavigation.
The sea is not visible from this house, but the eye is always led back to the intricate geometry of sails, masts and sterns. On the walls are framed images of ships and boats, including a watercolour of the sailing boat INSV Mhadei, on which Abhilash left from Mumbai in 2013. Mounted on the wall is a ship’s wheel, salvaged from the now destroyed passenger streamer HMHS Rohilla, which was a gift to Tomy.
There is a newer and shorter line on the globe, representing Abhilash’s second shot at sailing around the world. This squiggle takes a deep plunge into the Atlantic from the French coast and then disappears at a spot in the treacherous southern Indian Ocean. “That’s where his boat ran into a storm. This is the accident spot,” he says.
Abhilash back on his feet on Amsterdam Island, where he was taken after rescue. (Courtesy: Indian Navy)
Here, about 3,200 km off Perth, Abhilash’s sailboat Thuriya ran into savage winds on September 21. For nearly four days, the 39-year-old Navy Commander was stranded in a boat that had been dismasted, immobile from a back injury and unable to reach a spare satellite phone. “There was no way of contacting him. We couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat,” says the father.
On Friday afternoon, three days after he was rescued by the French vessel Osiris, Abhilash was moved from a hospital in Amsterdam Island to the INS Satpura. “He is walking now with crutches. He is much better, though he is very disappointed at having been knocked out of the race,” Captain D K Sharma, PRO, Indian Navy, said.
The ship, Sharma said, would first make its way to the Thuriya, which is 100 nautical miles south of the island. Deep sea divers of the Indian Navy, guided by Abhilash, would try to retrieve his valuable gear and personal belongings from it. “The sailboat cannot be lifted onto the ship. We will have to decide how to bring it back,” he added. “We can’t leave a child behind, can we?”
Abhilash was working on the deck when the storm hit. In about 70-odd hours, it was battered thrice. The last two times turned it 360 degrees. “It went inside the water and out. The mast broke. Abhilash scurried inside, and that was what saved him,” said Sharma.
It has been hard for the family, but Tomy says he wouldn’t ever wish to hold his son back. “I pray for him, but I don’t worry. You should not control your children. Let them be free birds,” he says.
