Two Indian Navy lady officers cross ‘graveyard of satellites’ on sails

Latitude 48°53′ South, Longitude 123°24′ West, are no ordinary coordinates. They refer to Point Nemo, named after Captain Nemo, a character from ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas’ and ‘The Mysterious Island’ written by French writer Jules Verne.

Considered to be the most remote place on earth, two Indian Navy lady officers, Lieutenant Commander Dilna K. and Lieutenant Commander Roopa A., did the country and the Indian Navy proud when they crossed Point Nemo at 0030h (IST) on Thursday, on board the INSV Tarini. And very interestingly, the crossing was done purely on sails.

The INSV Tarini was sailing from Lyttelton, New Zealand, to Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, during the third leg of Navika Sagar Parikrama II, a circumnavigation of the globe by the two lady Indian Navy officers.

Navika Sagar Parikrama II was flagged off on October 2, 2024, on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, from Goa and will sail for about 23,400 nautical miles over eight months before returning by May 2025.

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It was only 26 years ago that a ship—a Spanish research vessel Hespérides—had sailed to Point Nemo, a place so isolated that “the closest human presence often being aboard the International Space Station orbiting above”.

Also called the ‘Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility’, the nearest landmass is situated about 2,688 kilometers away. Point Nemo also is a graveyard of spacecrafts, where defunct and decommissioned satellites and space stations are made to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and fall into the ocean with the aim of minimizing risks to human populations.

A release said, “The officers have also collected vital water samples from the point, which will be analysed by the National Institute of Oceanography. These samples will provide valuable insights into oceanic conditions, including the presence of marine biodiversity and chemical composition, contributing to global oceanographic research.”