LITERATI INVITES YOU TO A BOOK READING OF ‘The First Indian: Story of the First Indian Solo Circumnavigation under Sail’
by Cdr. Dilip Donde ON SATURDAY 28TH MARCH AT 7 P.M. ELIAS PATEL WILL BE IN CONVERSATION WITH CDR. DILIP DONDE On 27 Apr 2006, Cdr Dilip Donde volunteered for ‘Project Sagar Parikrama’, an endeavour that involved building a sail boat in India and circumnavigating the earth alone in the boat. As he candidly admits in his book, he volunteered for the project out of sheer passion and with absolutely no idea of what he was getting himself into. But as he soon discovered, he wasn’t alone in his ignorance on the subject; it was shared by over a billion Indians. Essentially by volunteering for this project, Cdr Donde had thrown himself in the deep end of the pool without bothering to enquire about swimming lessons. However, he did manage to keep his head above the water and that is what his book is about. Over 170 people had completed a solo circumnavigation till then, so in a way Cdr Donde was treading a somewhat beaten path. The crucial difference was that he was trying to do it in India, with an almost total ignorance of the subject, an inherent inertia against anything new and an intransigent and quixotic bureaucracy. On finishing his trip, most people he met wanted to hear about his experiences at sea, not comprehending that the hard work put in for over three years, before starting, was responsible for his safe return. The story of Sagar Parikrama would have been incomplete without talking about those three years. For Cdr Donde those years were as exciting as, and often more unpredictable than, sailing the Southern Ocean. As he looks back on his journey from volunteering for the project to finishing the circumnavigation, he unravels a number of plots and sub plots in the story with him being the only constant. His book, therefore, is an attempt to tell the whole story as he lived through it. The book is an engrossing narrative about a man’s struggle to achieve his objectives against all odds. It is a story of how he could do, what he set out to do, with a firm belief in himself and a desperate will to succeed. It also talks about the inevitable highs & lows that he went through in making his dream a reality. As he progressed he kept meeting well-meaning and accomplished people like Sir Robin Knox - Johnston, the first man to sail solo and nonstop around the world, Mr Ratnakar Dandekar, a boat builder who was ready to take a huge gamble in building a sailboat with no past experience in sailboat construction and many others. They readily helped him as they believed in him and genuinely wanted him to succeed, eventually becoming a close knit team. Cdr Donde started blogging two days after starting his path breaking voyage. His posts on http://sagarparikrama.blogspot.in got him avid followers who tracked his every move, lived through every storm and sailed into every sunset with him. In his own words, the single biggest challenge was neither the boat building nor sailing solo through the Southern Ocean. It was to keep believing that the project will happen, notwithstanding the odds stacked against it. While he was not the first person to have been given the opportunity to do the project, he was definitely the first to grab it. As he reflects, had he not done so, he would have rued the lost opportunity for the rest of his life. Not having to do so is his biggest reward from the project. The story of ‘Project Sagar Parikrama’ is an Indian success story too. Here was a truly path breaking project that met all deadlines, exceeded its aims, stayed under budget, wrote a new chapter in the Maritime History of India while leaving a proud legacy and a million dollar worth of hardware for the future generations. ‘The First Indian’ is a riveting tale of all this and more from the mouth of the trailblazer himself. The book, published in August 2014, has had a very successful run and received warm accolades from the press as well as the reading public. Press Coverage: 1. http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/sailing-the-seven-seas/article6397709.ece 2. http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/first-indian-to-sail-around-the-globe-recounts-his-epic-voyage-in-a-book/ ELIAS PATEL : The voice of 105.4 FM Rainbow Goa and a well accomplished open water swimmer, lifeguard, swimming coach & open water diver. A trained & certified open water scuba diver,lifeguard & swimming instructor ,Elias is passionate about anything that has to do with the Ocean. Businessman, compere,radio jockey, TV anchor . A travel enthusiast with a flair for writing, this young man is also a music enthusiast.
