One sailboat. Six young women. Eight months. And an ocean of adventure ahead.
Indian Navy's all-women adventure sailing crew, which aims at several record-making achievements with an ambitious circumnavigation of the globe, was in the capital this week, meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the top brass of the Navy, before it embarks on a voyage to circumnavigate earth. The cast off is in the first week of September. However, the actual date will depend on the weather and winds.
The indigenous or, to use a politically favoured term, Made in India Indian Naval Sailing Vessel (INSV) Tarini is skippered by Lieutenant Commander Vartika Joshi, who has already created a record as the first woman skipper of a sea unit of the Indian Navy.
Built by Ratnakar Dandekar in Goa, INSV Tarini is the sister boat of INSV Mhadei, the Navy's first such vessel, which has done two record-breaking circumnavigations. The first was by Captain Dilip Dhonde, who became India's first solo circumnavigator. Later, Commander Abhilash Tomy upped that accomplishment by becoming India's first and only non-stop solo circumnavigator.
Tarini's big voyage has been aptly named Navika Sagar Parikrama. As she gave her presentation before the media, Joshi spoke lightly of the challenges of the voyage. A circumnavigation of the globe is a test of endurance. The voyage has to be a minimum of 21,600 nautical miles, the earth's circumference at the equator. Because of land masses ,the voyage doesn't actually ring the earth. But the crew also needs to cross the equator twice and touch two antipodal points (diametrically opposite on the globe). The boat has to be powered by sails alone. Engines can be fired on only for entry and exit from ports.
Joshi and crew will chart a route almost identical to the one Dhonde took in 2009. They will touch four ports. Freemantle in Australia, Lyttleton in New Zealand, Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands and Cape Town in South Africa. The journey is through some of the world's choppiest waters.
“Five-metre high waves are normal in certain stretches. Close to Antarctica, in addition to the rough sea, there is the cold to deal with. Average temperatures are four to five degrees Celcius,” said Dhonde, who has trained the crew.
The crew aims to be the first all-women naval crew in the world to circumnavigate the globe, as also the first all-women Asian team. Glory apart, there's a whole beautiful world waiting to be seen―aquamarine waters, penguins and dolphins, a sky spangled with constellations of the southern hemisphere among other wonders.
These attractions are what drew most of the crew towards the voyage. They have all volunteered and were picked from a list of 20.
“I always associated the Navy with the sea. But as an education officer posted in a training base, INS Chilka, I didn't get that exposure,” says Lt Payal Gupta from Dehradun. At 26, she is the youngest in the group.
The others, Lt Cdr Pratibha Jamwal, Swathi P., and Lt Aishwarya Boddapatti, S. Vijaya Devi, too, took the bait for adventure and water.
Talking to these young women, it's clear that those who join the Navy want to tread water. Vice admiral A.K. Chawla, chief of personnel, Indian Navy, said the next step would be to induct women officers into warships after certain logistic issues are cleared.
These six women have trained for two years, getting to know each other and their boat. This process of familiarising is crucial to the success of any expedition. The longest they have sailed together on INSV Tarini was from Goa to Cape Town, a 43-day voyage. “It was a good journey,” says Jamwal. Now, her eyes are longing for the voyage ahead.
