The dramatic rescue of Commander Tomy was quite a feat but should it raise questions about long-distance sailing expeditions?
It was quite a dramatic rescue on the high seas, with his boat Thuriya dismasted, and Commander Abhilash Tomy himself temporarily crippled, the fact that a small boat in the middle of the southern Indian Ocean, considered the wildest part of seas in the world, was located and Tomy rescued is a tremendous achievement. We wish the Commander a speedy recovery and hope that he is able to get back on a boat, maybe a much larger Indian Navy warship sooner rather than later. But this unfortunate incident, and that of a fellow Irish sailor competing in the same Golden Globe Race, a solo round-the-world sailing event, should raise some concerns about these long-distance sailing races. These events are undoubtedly a tremendous test of human endurance, but the risks involved are immense. Participants like Commander Tomy are very aware of the risks involved and he himself will be aware of the risks. Rescue on the high seas, particularly on a solo expedition, are difficult and thanks to the tremendous multinational effort which involved the Indian Navy’s highly capable naval reconnaissance, the Boeing P-8I as well as Australian and French naval and Civilian ships alongside the INS Satpura, that Commander Tomy will live to see another day. This raises a very important question, that is, are these events too dangerous?
One of the things that makes human species is our constant need to push our physical and mental and in some cases technological boundaries. Solo sailing expeditions, ultra-marathons through the Sahara desert, going to the bottom of the deepest parts of the Ocean and now the race to send a man to Mars within the next decade. But pushing the boundaries carries huge risks and in the past decade, increasingly many of us are becoming reluctant to take risks. Technology has reached a level where playing it safe is very easy, so is questioning those who undertake such massive risks upon themselves. Are the costs of rescuing one man from the middle of the high seas worth it, given that the money spent could have been used somewhere else? In our opinion, it is worth it because mankind should always keep pushing themselves to achieve more. Human achievement must not stall because we want to play it safe. It is only because we keep pushing the boundaries that we have achieved what we already have as a species. And there is another thing, Commander Tomy’s boat was found in the middle of nowhere, a spot not so far from where a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 once disappeared. Which reminds us, everyone has still not been found, something that remains a mystery and one of humanity’s greatest failures.