The Human Buoy

            From the second term onwards, cadets are encouraged to join a hobby club. Since I was a naval cadet till I decided to change my mind in the fourth term in favour of Army; (for the simple reason that OG colour would suit my complexion more than white) I and Arvind Sinha of 'E' Sqn decided to try our luck with sailing.

            With a lot of enthusiasm, we both pedaled our cycles uphill till the Comdt’s House and then down hill to the Peacock Bay. A large number of sailing boats moored along the jetty and we found one particular boat whose main sail was up and the jib was fluttering in the light breeze. Since we didn’t know how to rig another boat, we promptly took it without knowing that a more knowledgeable pair of cadets had left it half rigged due to some technical flaw in it. On being reminded by the Navy ‘ustaad’ to don our life jackets, we did so and on his query if we would be able to manage on our own, we displayed the legendary NDA confidence and nodded in the affirmative (because we did not want to tell a lie – morally up right you see.)

             So since the boat actually started moving from the bay to the open lake and after some pushing and shoving without much maneuvering of the sail, we both were elated beyond our expectations and just sat back to enjoy the ride. Once the boat reached the open lake, since the wind was in the required direction, it picked up speed increasing our elation in geometric progression. We both congratulated each other for having selected just the right hobby which was not as difficult as we thought it to be.

            We were not aware of the fact that a sailing regatta was to take place in the lake the next day for which lanes had been marked with buoys which had multi colour flags mounted on them. Our boat was soon headed towards the nearest row of buoys while we were completely engrossed in the joy of effortless sailing. Soon we heard loud warnings from a distant boat that we should sail clear of the buoys. This brought us to the ‘water realities’ and we started struggling with the sail and the jib in order to change the boat’s direction. Now it is very easy to study laws of physics in theory but rather difficult to control their effect in practice. So, despite our struggles, the boat refused to change the direction and continued ‘full ahead’ till it  had dislodged  half a dozen buoys before turning turtle dislodging its untrained crew as well. Thank God that we were wearing life jackets so remaining afloat was not much of a problem. (for limited period of time only)  The ‘distant’ motor boat immediately came close by and the Petty Officer in-charge started hurtling choicest adjectives at us both for having spoilt their ‘regatta lane’. The officer in-charge (the infamous ‘Sacchu’ for the NDA guys benefit) was also near by in another motor boat and came to the scene a little while later. He first told us to put our up-turned boat right side up which we couldn’t. Furious at this, he told us to remove one flag each from the buoys and keep afloat in the water holding the flags vertically till further orders as human buoys. While leaving, as an after thought, he also passed instructions to the Petty Officer to delete our names from the Sailing Club list.

            So that was the beginning and the end of our Sailing hobby at the Academy.