150 kmph winds, 14 mthigh waves, this beast was something else, says sailor Tomy
“The deep sea was scary as hell. It was so, so bad. That sight, it was something I had never seen before in my life,” said champion sailor Commander Abhilash Tomy over satellite phone from Île Amsterdam, a remote island in the southern Indian Ocean, in his first interview after being rescued from the remotest place on Earth in the southern Indian Ocean on Monday.
The 39-year-old is now recovering from a back injury he suffered while negotiating a deadly storm that left his yacht, SV Thuriya, crippled last week.
He was participating in this year’s Golden Globe Race (GGR), a circumnavigation race involving solo participants, and which bars the use of modern technology.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted on Thursday that he spoke to Tomy. “Every Indian is praying for his quick recovery. I also compliment the teams that were involved in his rescue.”
Reconstructing some of the most terrifying moments of his 70-hour ordeal, Tomy said he was working on the Thuriya’s deck on September 21 when powerful winds knocked down his boat, leaving it tilted at a 110-degree angle and sending its mast under water.
“It was scary as hell. When the first knockdown happened, I was swept off my feet. I fell down to the mast and put my hands around it. I got swept outward to the tip of the mast. And then a few seconds later when the boat straightened, I found myself hanging from the top of the mast,” said Tomy, non-stop hiccups interrupting his conversation with this reporter.
“The hiccups haven’t stopped since the mishap. I have some problem in speaking because of that,” said Tomy from a tiny medical facility at Île Amsterdam, a 55-sq km island that is part of French territory in southern Indian Ocean.
The first knockdown was only the beginning of a nightmare that would test Tomy’s endurance and willpower for the next three days, with the entire country praying for his early rescue.
As Tomy fell from the top of the mast, his hand got entangled in a wire rope. “My watch got entangled in it. I was hanging by one hand.”
“I felt my wrist would crack. Then the watch strap snapped and I came crashing down to the boom attached to the mast on the deck,” he said on Thursday.
It was the first of four knockdowns, with the last being the deadliest.
Tomy said he had a warning of winds of 100 kmph, along with 10-metre-high waves.
“But this beast was something else. The wind speed was more than 150 kmph and there were 14-metre-high waves. The sea was so bad that there was not an inch of water that was not white. There was sea foam everywhere. Every millimeter of water was ripped up by hurricane-force winds,” said the decorated sailor, who has sailed more than 52,000 miles in his naval career spanning 18 years.