Champion sailor Abhilash Tomy set to return to race that almost claimed his life

Champion sailor Commander Abhilash Tomy (retd) will return to the Golden Globe Race (GGR) this year, an enormously challenging solo and non-stop circumnavigation race that almost killed him in 2018. He will reattempt the gruelling 30,000-mile race in the UAE-flagged boat “Bayanat”, the former Indian Navy officer announced at Dubai’s Expo 2020 on Tuesday.

The race, which bars the use of modern technology, will begin from Les Sables-d’Olonne in France on September 4. Tomy has been sponsored by Bayanat, an Abu Dhabi-based geospatial, data analytics and AI company. He earlier tried to raise ₹4 crore through crowdfunding to be able to compete in the quadrennial event.

“I am very excited about returning to the race. I have already finished training related to celestial navigation, survival and maintenance of the boat. Preparations are now on for a 2,000-nautical mile pre-qualification solo voyage in the north Atlantic Ocean,” Tomy said over the phone from Dubai.

He could not finish the GGR’s 2018 edition because of an accident. He suffered a debilitating back injury on September 21, 2018, after rough seas and powerful winds in the southern Indian Ocean — one of the remotest spots on Earth — crippled his yacht, SV Thuriya. He was rescued 70 hours later.

“I am extremely confident of finishing the race this time, although there’s always a bit of luck involved. Don McIntyre, the founder and organiser of GGR, says adventure is something with an unknown outcome. The accident in 2018 was sheer bad luck,” said Tomy, who took premature retirement from the navy in January 2021.

Before the accident, Tomy was in the third position among 11 international participants, and had sailed more than 10,500 nautical miles since the race began on July 1, 2018.

That was the 50th year of the race that commemorates Robin Knox-Johnston’s feat in 1968, with participants required to operate under the same conditions, even navigating using charts and the stars.

Tomy became the first Indian to circumnavigate the globe on board his previous boat Mhadei — solo, non-stop and unassisted — in 2013. At the end of the five-month-long voyage, the President of India received Tomy at the Gateway of India in Mumbai. He was awarded India’s second-highest peacetime gallantry award, Kirti Chakra, for the achievement.

Tomy first announced that he would take part in GGR-22 at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit-2019. Speaking at the 17th edition of the summit, he gave details of the harrowing moments that abruptly ended his participation in GGR-18 but thrust him into the spotlight for surviving an ordeal that tested the limits of human endurance.

“I will be taking part in the Golden Globe Race 2022 on the Bayanat. It is a big thing for me and here is why. On 21 Sep 2018, I was racing in the south Indian Ocean when we were caught in an unusual storm which claimed two of the three boats in its way. Mine was one of them,” Tomy wrote in one among a series of tweets on his next GGR attempt and what he endured in 2018.

He said he was operated upon two days after he was rescued and brought to India.

“Titanium rods were inserted in my spine and 5 vertebrae were fused into one. My legs were so badly off that I had to learn to walk again… But I did learn to walk, and then got into a cockpit and got back to flying, and sailing! 3 and a half (years) later, I am heading back into the same race that almost got me killed. Wish me luck,” he wrote on Twitter.