All-girls Navy crew to return home after circling the globe

Six Indian Navy women are set to return home on Monday after circling the Earth for over eight months in a sail boat.

The team of Lt Cdr Vartika Joshi, Lt Cdr Pratibha Jamwal, Lt Cdr P Swathi, Lt Aishwarya Boddapati, Lt Sh Vijaya Devi and Lt Payal Gupta began their circumnavigation voyage from Goa on September 10.

The team will return to Goa on Monday after eight months on the high seas with four stopovers at Fremantle (Australia), Lyttleton (New Zealand), Port Stanley (Falklands), and Cape Town (South Africa).

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will receive the girls at Goa in a flag-in ceremony.

The event was initially planned on May 19 but pushed forward by another two days as poor weather slowed down the sail boat's journey to the final destination, sources said.

The sailboat is currently located about 200 nautical miles south-west of Goa.

Going by the original schedule, INSV Tarini was to reach India by April end.

The target date, however,, was advanced to May after the boat's steering gear and a navigation instrument were broken by the rough weather near Mauritius last month.

The unforeseen break, however, didn't take away anything from the girls' team circumnavigation credit as they had fulfilled all the conditions such as crossing the three major capes (Good Hope, Leeuwin and Horn); passing over every meridian and crossing the equator twice.

This is the third successful circumnavigation attempt by the Indian Navy after the first Indian solo circumnavigation by Capt Dilip Donde in 2009-10 and the first Indian non-stop solo circumnavigation by Cdr Abhilash Tomy in 2012-13.