The call of the sea

After becoming the first Indian to circumnavigate the globe solo, non-stop, Tomy had become a celebrity in sailing circles

Abhilash Tomy sailing onboard Bayanat. Credit: Special Arrangement

Just as Urmimala Abhilash-Nag begins to recount the story of her husband at sea using a scale model boat to describe the harrowing incident of 2018, her youngest son peels himself away from a reproaching nanny and storms into the living room.

The three-and-a-half-year-old - Abhraniel - with delicate curls for hair is captivated by a male voice in the room.

He hasn’t heard much of it of late, least of all his father’s: Commander (retd) Abhilash Tomy.

“He misses his father,” says Urmimala, gently shushing her son as he asks ‘what’s his name?’.

“He gets attached to any male figure who comes home.”

The unmistakable melancholy of her husband’s absence replaces her verve for her husband’s venturesome spirit. She shakes off the lull quickly in favour of an objective narration.

While Urmimala remains forcefully brave for the sake of her young family (she has the 12-year-old Vedaant to raise too), Tomy is braving arguably the toughest sailing event in the world for the second time.

After becoming the first Indian to circumnavigate the globe solo, non-stop onboard Sagar Parikrama 2 in 2013, Tomy had become a celebrity in sailing circles. Even the then-president of India Pranab Mukherjee arrived at the Gateway of India to receive him.

This effort, and of course his impeccable record as a naval officer, helped him get the golden ticket in 2018. He became the only Asian invitee at the refurbished Golden Globe Race - an event which was last run in 1968.

GGR, which was originally a race sponsored by the Sunday Times in Britain as a branding exercise, was docked after the maiden run where there was a high attrition rate despite only nine entrants. Rumours of a sailor committing suicide during the event didn’t help its cause either.

Several races have since branched out of the original concept, but none have piqued the interest of purists more than the GGR.

Tomy, a purist in every sense of the word, got ready for what was natural to him: the seas have been his leitmotif since he was but a child boat-spotting in Kottayam.

But unlike with Sagar Parikrama 2, where he had the technology to rely on, this time there was none to be had.

In fact, GGR only allows sailors to use technology which was available 50 years ago. Meaning, Tomy has to travel close to 30,000 nautical miles with nothing but himself, a rather small ship and an approximation of supplies.

“…we can’t really say the race takes only, say, eight months. It might be more,” Urmimala interjects.

As most of these miles are uncharted, Tomy uses sextants, paper charts, and intuition to chart his course. Luckily, he has a penchant for reading constellations well. So far so good, Tomy has made it halfway around the world onboard the Bayanat at the time of this article.

“He passed the treacherous patch where he nearly died last time,” says Urmi. “Something in him just lifted, and since then has been charging past everyone. He had some negativity associated with that spot and now that he has put it behind, he can go and win the race.”

‘The spot’ Urmimala is referring to in the vast landless expanse in the south where the Agulhas Current takes down more boats than it lets through. Tomy was caught in a storm there on December 11 in 2018.

“Abhilash was outside the boat when he had a knockdown (the boat turns turtle and then comes back up),” she remembers being informed. “Abhilash was holding onto the mast and when he went underwater, he slid all the way to the top of the mast. When the boat came back around, he was at the top of the mast and then he slipped and fell on a beam, breaking his spine in several places. And then the mast broke too so his race was done.”

She continues: “He went into the cabin to use the satellite phone and ask for help but he realised he had no sensation in his limbs. He slumped to the bottom. He knew he was in trouble."

Urmimala clutches on at her recently-adopted dog just a little harder, and says: “I got a call from the controllers. They asked me to sit down. I knew something was wrong. They told me he was in trouble. I could barely breathe. All I remember saying was ‘please, just bring back my husband’.”

Tomy was rescued three days later, by accident, as a small French fishing vessel picked him up even as naval units and air units from India and Australia looked for the sailor. “The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) called him when he was on that island and told him in as many words that they will bring him home,” informs Urmimala.

He was attended to at a small hospital on the nearest island before the Indian Navy brought him to Delhi after five days. He reached Goa not much later with titanium plates keeping his spine upright.

Another thing she remembers, vividly so, is this: “As soon as he came back home, he said: I am going back to the race.”

Urmimala said ‘no’, but relented as the weeks wore on with Tomy looking more and more despondent. “These are not the kind of men you can hold down. His spirit was sinking so I had to let go of him, he needed this to make him happy.”

The only restriction she put in place was that Tomy needed to find a sponsor to fund this race, unlike the last time when all of their savings were used up on a boat which couldn’t be recovered.

Bayanat, a UAE-based company in the field of geospatial artificial intelligence, came on board, and on September 4, Tomy was at the starting line in Les Sables d’Olonne (LSO) on the western coast of France.

Even this, his participation, was quite the miracle as his newly refurbished boat crashed into a massive ship en route to LSO.

Tomy, with a couple of enthusiastic young men for the crew, were on the mandatory 2000-nautical mile journey to LSO from Gijon in Spain to qualify for GGR.

“Abhilash was in the cabin while one of the young men was on the watch,” she says with more than a hint of irritation in her voice. “He somehow managed to ignore a humungous boat in front of him and they crashed, ruining the snout of Bayanat.”

The incident occurred on August 15. Tomy had 20 days to fix his boat and get to LSO. Impossible?

Endless supply of coffee and class courtesy Dick Koopman (a boat designer), brother Aneesh Tomy's culinary skills, team manager Sandra Shipp’s enterprise in getting labourers to work during vacation season in France, a couple of Belgian craftsmen, help from other participants, and above all, Urmimala’s support, meant Tomy was ready for another adventure.

Since then, Tomy has set a new seven-day record for pace at 1,145 miles covered in the period. Urmimala informs on Saturday that Tomy is in the second position as of noon.

It is impossible to say in what position and when Tomy will land at LSO to complete the race, but it won’t be anytime soon.

Until then, sporadic calls via satellite phones, letters and such keep Urmimala and her children tethered to the man of the house. “This is the last time he is leaving us like this,” she says.

She sounds like she means it, but can Tomy ignore his leitmotif, his purpose, his solitude? Doubt it.