Story of the First Indian Solo Circumnavigation under Sail
By Husein K Chunawala
Pune, June 25: BDB Book Club organised a session with Commander Dilip Donde, author of the book, The First Indian. BDB Book Club is a Social Initiative of BDB India Private Limited, a leading Strategy Consulting and Market Research organisation founded in 1989.
Speaking to the audience, Donde shared experiences from his adventurous solo circumnavigation under sail. He also elaborated on the adversities he faced and insights from the book, The First Indian.
In 2006 he was posted in Andaman Islands and he was assigned the job of keeping track of tiny activities and was having a wonderful time, meanwhile Indian Navy was seeking for a volunteer to pursue a project for sailing around the world. And when the Indian Navy reached to him, he agreed for the project and showed interest without knowing that the volunteer has to sail as a Solo.
The solo circumnavigation means that the sail should start and finish at the same port, should travel the longitudes certain times, in addition to this the boat should travel through south of all the continents and not pass through any canals and straits. This has never been conducted by any of the crew or solo ships. He had to make a decision for building a boat in India. Ratnakar Dandekar made the first boat as per the requirements.
Donde was trained in Mauritius and had his first ever solo trip from Mauritius to Goa. The first left his journey began in August 2009 which was from Mumbai to Fremantle. It took 35 days to cover this distance of almost 5400 Nm (Nautical Mile = 1.84 km), followed by different continental legs. The last leg was of 45 days which he completed to reach the same port from which he had started, a distance of 5800 Nm from Capetown to Mumbai on May 2010.
During the interactive session Donde answered questions ranging from the issue of drinking water stock to his motivation to undertake such a journey. He has passed on the baton to others and has trained an all women crew who are currently sailing from Mauritius to Goa in the same sail boat named, Mhadei.
Vasu Ramanujam, the honorary secretary of the BDB Book Club facilitated the interactive discussions and also proposed the vote of thanks. Chief Guest, Hemant Watve, CEO and MD of WILO Mather & Platt Pumps Private Limited spoke on the need of applying the learnings from such life experiences in our work and careers. Manish Kulkarni, Director, BDB India Private Limited compered the program.
BDB Book Club is a platform for book lovers to meet, discuss, comment and share their points of view on a professional publication, mostly non-fiction, and every month. The club announces the book to be discussed in advance. The book blub meets once every month typically on the last Saturday.
Over the past five-and- a-half years, BDB Book Club has hosted special book reading sessions for its members, which have been graced by renowned authors such as R Gopalakrishnan, Ravi Venkatesan, Dr R A Mashelkar, Subroto Bagchi, Sudha Menon, Dr Shashi Tharoor, Gurcharan Das and Prakash Iyer. BDB Book Club membership is complimentary.
More information on the BDB Book Club is available on this link : http://bdbipl.com/index.php/
(Husein K Chunawala is a student of Indira School of Communication)
