Hours away from Golden Globe Race finish line, Abhilash Tomy’s final burst: I am racing to go home

Panaji: Exhausted, homesick after 235 days at sea in solitude, and less than 24 hours away from the finish line at the French town of Les Sables d’Olonne, Abhilash Tomy can feel a wave of emotions washing over himself.
“I am racing to go home,” he tells TOI over a satellite phone call.
The cold French weather can do little to dampen his joy on completing a stupendous 30,000-mile race across the world, overcoming adversity of every kind, as he is finally ready to bury the ghosts of 2018.
The Golden Globe Race 2022 has lifted the psychological weight that he was carrying and helped him overcome the memories of September 2018 when a storm and a near-fatal injury knocked him out of the race.
“In 2018 it was a race. I was moving up the ladder... This time, the only takeaway for me is that I managed to get out of that mental thing of the accident and the rescue,” says Tomy in his last satellite call before the finish line.
Tomy cheated death in 2018 when he fell from the mast and crashed onto the hard deck in the midst of a storm.
Even as he tried to regain his feet, a rogue wave smashed into his boat and in the knockdown, the mast was destroyed, rendering the boat useless. Stranded in the southern Indian Ocean close to Antarctica with a spinal surgery, it took three days till an international rescue effort could get to him and since then, Tomy has been dwelling on returning to the same race.
The former Dornier pilot remains unaware of his ranking in the Golden Globe Race 2022, but with just three of the 16 competitors remaining in the race, he knows he is assured of a podium finis
With his past no longer haunting him, the former naval commander says he is ready to return home with his family here in Goa.
“You don’t stop being a father, you don’t stop being a husband during the race,” says Tomy, sharing his worries about his family, their needs and their safety.
After surviving on packed meal pouches meat for the military, tinned meat and rice, Tomy is also craving for a fish thali from Viva Goa, eclairs from Loutolim’s famous Jila Bakery, a Banoffee pie from Delhi’s Khan Market and a combo of Dal-Rice-Omelette that his wife Urmimala cooks the way he likes it.
“I have got no snacks left and nothing to drink except water. There is food, but you need a little bit of variety, and you need to keep eating because the calorie requirements on solo sailing are very high,” he says.
The retired naval commander has been cooking, navigating, and repairing the boat while trying to maintain balance as the boat pitches and swings with the wind and the waves. This has taken a physical toll on the sailor. “I may have lost about 20 kilos out at sea,” he confesses.
Tomy has been sailing through the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans with little communication with the outside world, relying only on his wits and his naval training to compete in the gruelling race.
Back home, his supporters and his family are left biting their nails with the twists and turns of the race, the weather and every challenge that Tomy somehow finds a way to surmount. Race organiser Don McIntyre admits that the Bayanat is the most repaired boat in the race.
While many have admired the Indian sailor’s grit, resourcefulness and ability to bounce back from every calamity, Tomy himself feels that he could have done better.
One of the things that he wished he had done was spend more time on his 36-foot yacht, the Bayanat. “When I started, I anticipated about seven months to finish… If I had spent more time sailing the boat and practicing in strong winds, I would have been at least 10 days ahead of myself right now,” says the 44-year-old former maritime reconnaissance pilot.