I had my first experience of solo sailing in the first half of 2011 when I skippered the Mhadei from Cape Town to Goa in a voyage lasting 33 days which saw me rounding the dreaded Cape of Good Hope (better known as the Graveyard of Ships) for the second time, negotiating gale force headwinds around the Agulhas and the trades followed by the first brunt of that year's monsoons in the Arabian Sea.
It had not been an easy beginning because within the first four days the generator and the galley had caught fire, I had torn a sail and partly lost self steering because of issues with the wind instruments.
Sailing upwind in gale force winds for days and constant breakdowns in the boat were bound to wreak havoc in my mind and that is what happened because it went into a spiral of negative thoughts that threatened to drill a hole in the boat. It did take a lot of effort but by the eighth day my mind had come under control and the rest of the voyage turned out to be a blissful experience.
Ahead of big voyage, I turned vegetarian and I gradually began to discard comforts that land had to offer ,preferring instead to lead a spartan life. I shifted bag and baggage into the boat and ended up living in it for 11 months in the most spartan way possible.
My big sail around the world began on Nov 1, 2012 but by then I had already spent more than three years in preparation to survive and sail alone in a voyage that could last almost 200 days at a stretch. What transpired in the course of the voyage had been what I had exactly anticipated, just that there was a big difference between anticipation and actually living through it.
It had been a sail through all the weather zones in the planet, a voyage in which the boat and I regularly faced winds that could blow "roofs off the top of houses" or "dogs off their chains", waves that would easily tower over a four -storey building, temperatures that would vary from 4-40 degrees, unending rains, days of fogs, areas of harsh sunlight to remote regions where the sun would show itself only once a month.
The seas would put on a psychedelic display of lighting as the boat sailed through it, the threat of icebergs breaking loose from the Antarctic Continent and of wayward whales, shipping and fishing, all loomed.
I did cut the voyage short by almost 50 days but then 150 days of keeping constant watch coupled with lack of sleep and exhaustion from strenuous physical work could at any point in time break me mentally and become the reason for hallucinations or cause me to commit that one mistake that would bring the voyage to a grinding halt.
I would get but 3-4 hours of sleep on a good day, none of it at a stretch, and I continued life aboard this tiny boat which had become a washing machine of sorts whose control knob had no delicate setting. At times heavy work in the heat would bring in nausea and headache and on the other extreme severe cold would cause burns.
As I stepped into the Pacific I decided to bathe in sea water for one final time before hitting the screaming 50s but it ended up numbing me because I had never experienced water at 4 degrees on my body. Consequently, I went without a bath for almost 50 days across the Pacific and the Atlantic all the way up to Cape of Good Hope.
A passing storm once tore a sail and almost ripped the mast off and as I was nearing the end of the voyage, severe diesel contamination both in water tanks and bottled water threatened to prematurely end the voyage.
On the evening of March 31, 2013 when I crossed the first set of buoys at the mouth of Mumbai harbour I was putting an end to the voluntary solitude that I had imposed on myself for the last 150 days.
What I had endured on my own volition was something that very few on this planet have experienced- the unadulterated terror and bliss of sailing around the world, without stops, without help, without replenishment, without any human company and without any meaningful means of rescue had things gone wrong.
For every sight and event that I may narrate to a landlubber, I have seen much more that I can't describe because I don’t have the means to and more, they would be misinterpreted.
The voyage took me through parts of the globe that are so terrifying and remote that they are regularly regarded by sailors as being without rules, without laws, without gods and at times without common sense.
I lost a good eleven kilos of body weight and even after seven months normal sleep pattern is yet to set in. There have been 78 others like me in this planet who have successfully completed such a mission but what we forget to remember is that for every successful sailor there have been many others who have never completed their attempt, wrecked their boats and lives, have contemplated and at times committed suicide, or they were simply lost at sea and their bodies never found. Many of them who have returned have come back as mental wrecks and many have been straight away carted off to mental hospitals.
The case of Donald Crowhurst- a man who attempted a solo and non-stop circumnavigation in 1968 but ended cooking up fantastic reports without ever leaving the Atlantic and eventually committing suicide- is perhaps the best known. Like Robin's voyage, solo circumnavigations have always been a story of mental, physical and moral courage of the solitary sailor in the face of some of the worst terrors that man can experience.
And for the many who have crossed the threshold, it is also the tale of an overpowering sense of bliss, solitude and the loss of meaning to life on shore, exemplified in the likes of Bernard Moitessier, who chose not to return to harbour but sail twice around the world instead of going down the pages of history as the first non-stop, solo circumnavigator.
Life flipped a day after my official reception. I was surrounded by people who sought attention and information, people who wanted to know what I ate and how I drank and how I lived my life. Even the strange way in which I washed clothes made it to many news channels.
I caused roadblocks whenever I would get out of my car and there was a never-ending stream of visitors at home, some of whom even touched my feet in reverence. All in all, there was not a moment when I would be left alone and I let it all pass as if it were a motion picture happening in front of my eyes, something that I could only watch but not be involved with.
