Stardust and Anaconda

We have had the luck of seeing some wildlife. There were whales a day after the departure, schools of dolphins as is the wont and the two sparrows I wrote about earlier. There has been some amount of bio-luminescence too. Cdr Donde remarked they might be reflections of stars, but on a cloudy day they were the sea’s own stars. Today we were fortunate to have a couple of dolphins at night. They criss crossed the bow and left in their wake a disturbed sea that mildly erupted with light, as if an anaconda made of stardust.

Crossing Maldives and Salaaming Jamshad

Five days of sailing (mostly motoring) and we are crossing Maldives. Suvarna is in company. It has been a hot five days, with an un anticipated 2 knot northward current slowing our progress. Squalls have been frequent, but wind has not been so. We languished a while before deciding to motor for fear that we might not make it to the race in time. Will it be Cape Town for new years? Not too sure.

 

My body has settled into a routine unlike previous sailings. Bowel movements have been normal and I make it a point to take bath once a day. Sea water is not one bit sticky. Twice while we shook off a reef from the main, I was able to gather about a bucket of fresh water with the help of someone else. I used it for bathing.

 

A cute couple of sparrows found their way into the boat about a hundred miles out of Goa. We tried to feed them and humour them, but I guess they are not too fond of sailors’ food. One of them died. Cdr Dilip gave her a sea burial. He said the final stitch wasn’t through the nose because she had a beak. I don’t know what happened to the other.

Capt Prakash, Commanding Officer of INS Mandovi left a fine collection of books (19 of them in all). His only request was that he wanted all of them back to which I replied that there were two kinds of fools –“those that lend books, and those that return them”. That prompted him to make a catalogue. So far I have finished  Woody Allen’s “Side Effects” and Murakami’s “After the Quake”. Now onto “King Rat”.

Three autopilots and a pilot

Three autopilots and a pilot have come together on the Mhadei yet again!

Preparations for the Cape to Rio Race have been going on pretty well indeed. By afternoon today the boat’s refit was completed with nothing pending. We even sailed out a couple of times, once with NDTV crew for a shoot and once independently to check out the water maker etc. What remains are fuelling, provisioning and stocking up on essentials such as medicines. That done, we hope to sail out sometime next week. It will be sad to leave one crew behind. In all possibility it will be Ram Lal who has been showing a lot of dedication in his short stint with the boat. I hope to give him a slot as crew some other time.

Testing one two three

This is a check to see if I can use the live writer to blog directly.

Sounding the First Post

Followers of Commander Donde's voyage around the world would be only too aware of Mhadei and their exploits and of Tell Tale who followed them around the world taking pictures and trying to be of whatever assistance as could be. Those who are not well aware of Cdr Donde and Sagar Parikrama should visit www.sagarparikrama.blogspot.com to acquaint with the story so far.

It was sometime when Cdr Donde was on his second leg (Freo to Lyttelton) that Adm Awati, mentor of the first project, recommended to the naval headquarters about a more ambitious project - an unassisted solo non stop circumnavigation of the globe- for which I was the natural choice (condemned to volunteer, I would say). It was an attractive idea for the naval headquarters. It did not take long before deciding on a suitable vessel. The Mhadei needed only minor modifications and a short refit before it could be put for the voyage. It was also decided to take part in the Cape to Rio Race-2011, which comprised sailing the boat from Goa to Cape Town and Cape Town to Rio with crew of four, return to Cape Town shorthanded and finally sail her all the way back to Goa single handed. The 17000 miles that she would put under her keel on this voyage coupled with the 3500 miles I already had sailed on her amounted to a circumnavigation in itself. Moreover, there could be no better training.

In due course, I was transferred from the far flung Andaman and Nicobar Islands to INWTC (Mb). A week later I found myself in Goa at INS Mandovi monitoring refit work and modifications being carried out by Ratnakar Dandekar of Aquarius Fiberglas. Soon a crew of four comprising an officer and three sailors joined. Lt Cdr Khajuria is an engineer officer appointed to an RE while the three sailors, viz., Ram Lal, Pankaj Kumar and Pradeep Kumar belong to the aviation cadre of the navy. Cdr Donde dropped in for a few days to oversee progress of work. However, Pradeep Kumar was soon to leave us due to the untimely death of his grandfather.

Modifications and refit to the boat was divided into two, one part of which was to be completed prior to the Race and the other which was to be preparatory to the non stop solo in 2011. Work is progressing well and is expected to complete in time. Hopefully, we should be sailing out on the 20th of Nov to Cape Town.