Indian Navy’s Commander Abhilash Tomy is incapacitated in his vessel, which was damaged in a storm Friday.
New Delhi: Extremely choppy seas and low visibility are hindering international efforts to rescue a celebrated Indian sailor stuck over 3,500 km off Australia after a storm Friday damaged his boat and left him with an incapacitating back injury.
Rescue personnel are all the more worried because the lone communication device with Commander Abhilash Tomy’s may soon run out of battery.
Tomy, 39, was sailing solo as part of the Golden Globe Race (GGR), which involves travelling 30,000 miles (over 48,000 km) to circumnavigate the globe. In 2013, the Kirti Chakra awardee became the first Indian to circumnavigate the globe solo.
His vessel, SV Thuriya, is stuck in a remote location in the southern Indian Ocean. The storm, which is said to have partly damaged the boats of at least two other race participants, broke SV Thuriya’s main mast. According to latest reports, the area is still witnessing 14-metre high waves with winds at 130 km/h and a heavy cloud cover.
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He is “as far from help as you can possibly be”, the race organisers had said about the location where Tomy is stranded.
Indian Navy spokesperson Captain D.K. Sharma told ThePrint that the French fisheries patrol vessel Osiris, from the Reunion island, will be the first to reach Tomy’s approximate location, possibly Sunday night.
“But it won’t be able to do anything tonight because of the rough sea conditions and the pitch dark night,” he added.
“The tricky weather conditions are adding to the hurdles,” he said.
According to some reports, Osiris will pick up Commander Tomy by Monday and subsequently transfer him to the Australian navy’s HMAS Ballarat warship, which has set off from Perth in the sailor’s direction.
Earlier, a statement by the Indian Navy had said that Tomy’s location was approximately 1,900 nautical miles (over 3,500 km) from Perth, Australia, and 2,700 nautical miles (approx. 5,000 km) from Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari).
Over the last two days, the Indian Navy has deployed a stealth frigate, INS Satpura, with a Chetak Helicopter, the replenishment tanker INS Jyoti, and a Boeing P-8i aircraft for the rescue mission.
The rescue mission is being coordinated by the Indian Navy, the Australian Rescue Coordination Centre at Canberra, and the Australian Defence Department, among other agencies.
According to some reports, Tomy got in touch with the race organisers in France Sunday through text messages and requested for a stretcher. He is believed to be confined to his bunk, unable to access food. The satellite phone he had access to has died, while the second is reportedly inaccessible.
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May soon be out of reach
Some reports suggest that the batteries on his emergency texting unit are on the verge of running out too. Tracking his coordinates will be a challenge if the external tracking unit goes off as well.
Flying out of Mauritius, the P-8i has been able establish contact with Tomy, who responded by activating his Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB).
Tomy was in the third position among 11 participants of the race. He had sailed over 10,500 nautical miles (nearly 20,000 km) in the 84 days since the race began on 1 July.
Rear Admiral Jonathan Dallas Mead, commander of the Australian fleet, has said it would take a few days to reach Tomy’s location in such dangerous conditions. An alumnus of the National Defence College, Delhi, Mead is reported to have sent a message to his course-mates, saying, “We will find your man.”
Tomy was commissioned in the Indian Navy’s executive branch, and opted to be a pilot for Naval Aviation.