Lieutenant Commanders Roopa A and Dilna K have completed 3 months at sea and have embarked on the longest and toughest leg of the voyage.
Lieutenant Commanders Dilna A and Roopa K, the Indian Navy officers who started circumnavigation the globe from Goa on October 2, 2024 have started the New Year with another historic landmark.
The duo moved from the Eastern to the Western Hemisphere and crossed the International Date Line on January 9.
The International Dateline is the imaginary boundary between one day and the next.
On crossing the IDL, they gained 24 hours and shifted their clocks back by a day, January 8.
'Which means we get to live this day all over again,' they said in a video message posted by the Indian Navy on Twitter.
To celebrate the occasion the officers offered cubes of chocolate as an offering of sweets to Lord Varuna, the god of sea and sky.
SEE: Jubilant Lieutenant Commanders Dilna N and Roopa K after crossing the International Dateline
The two lady officers are the sole occupants aboard the 17-metre sailboat and are on the third leg of their arduous and historic 8-month voyage.
The third leg is the longest and most dangerous passage of the journey: it is 10,400 kms long where the vessel INSV Tariniwill pass the treacherous Drake Passage and go round Cape Horn to reach Port Stanley, Falkland Islands.
"The difficult part of the journey will be around the southern ocean because there's no landmass to obstruct the wind or the current," Lieutenant Commander Roopa told Rediff a day before the start of the journey from Goa on October 1.
"We have planned the entire circumnavigation to cross Cape Horn at a particular time during the Austral summer in the southern hemisphere."
"Even when it is summer in the Pacific, the temperature is below two degrees. There are hailstorms and snowfall. Entering that part will be tough and it will be the longest leg of the journey -- about 45 days."
SEE: The lieutenanat commanders offer cubes of chocolate as an offering of sweets to Lord Varuna, the god of sea and sky.
The officers will reach Port Stanley on February 25. INSV Tarinileft Port Lyttelton, New Zealand, on January 4. It had arrived in Lyttelton from Fremantle, Australia, in 28 days.
We wish them fair winds on this long and toughest leg of the voyage to the Falklands!
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
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