Naval Commander Abhilash Tomy reaches Visakhapatnam, shifted to INHS Kalyani

#CdrTomy shifted to INHS Kalyani.On 21 Sep, his sailing vessel ,'Thuriya’ was dismasted when the boat was caught in a violent storm in the South Indian Ocean. Cdr Abhilash Tomy suffered a severe back injury and dropped out of the @ggr2018official. The first video.@IndianExpress pic.twitter.com/GFbiZukkUY

— Rashmi Rajput (@rashmirajput_ET) October 6, 2018

Following severe damages to his yacht, in a message via satellite phone, Tomy had asked for a stretcher as he was rendered immobile after a serious back injury and conveyed that he was safe on his vessel. Following the message to the GGR base in France, a massive multinational rescue operation was launched.

READ | A sailor and his boat: Abhilash Tomy’s love affair with the sea that brought him to race

Subsequently, the Indian Navy launched ‘Operation Raksham’ and dispatched INS Satpura with a Chetak helicopter and tanker INS Jyoti along with an aircraft P8i to rescue the commander. Tomy was first sighted by the Indian Aircraft operating from Mauritius. Tomy was rescued by French fishing vessel Osiris after which he was shifted to Amsterdam Islands.  INS Satpura after fuelling from INS Jyoti arrived off the Ile Amsterdam and safely evacuated Cdr Tomy using the ship’s helicopter on September 28.

After surviving the ordeal, Cdr Tomy said he survived in the storm hit ocean because of his sailing skills and Naval training. “The sea was unbelievably rough. Me & my boat Thuriya were pitched against nature’s might. I survived because of my sailing skills, the soldier bit in me and my Naval training cut-in for that fight – Cdr Abhilash Tomy. Very thankful to #IndianNavy & all who rescued me,” Tomy was quoted as saying in the Indian Navy spokesman’s tweet.

Cdr Tomy was one of the participants in the 2018 Golden Globe Race, the 50th-anniversary edition of the first Sunday Times Golden Globe Race held in 1968-69. Eighteen of the world’s most elite sailors, belonging to 13 countries, began the race from Les Sables-d’Olonne in France on July 1, expecting to be at sea for 200 days or more in a return to the “Golden Age of ‘one sailor, one boat’ facing the great oceans of the world”. They were not supposed to use GPS, and rely only on sextants, paper maps and the stars. Eight participants — including Cdr Tomy, who was in third place when he lost his mast and was severely injured in the storm — have had to quit so far.