The Kochi Area Pulling Regatta 2022 of the Southern Naval Command (SNC) was conducted in the Ernakulam Channel on Saturday.
In a keenly contested event, the combined team from Anti-Submarine Warfare School and Diving School won the overall Regatta Trophy (called The Cock). The team from Signal School and 1TS secured the runners-up position. Races during the regatta were conducted in the traditional pulling ‘whalers’ and held in four different categories — junior sailors, senior sailors, officers, and best whaler.
The boats had to cover a distance of about a kilometre in the Ernakulam Channel, starting from the Venduruthy bridge. Six teams, formed from all major units of the SNC based in Kochi, participated in the regatta. Surgeon Rear Admiral Dinesh Sharma, Command Medical Officer, was the chief guest for the occasion.
The regatta is one of the most prestigious and traditional sporting activities conducted by the Indian Navy. The boats used in the regatta are 27-foot-long whalers – a type of sea boat – each manned by a crew of five ‘pullers’ (rowers) and one ‘coxswain’ (helm). The boats are named as ‘whalers’ as they were used in earlier days for catching whales at sea. The pulling regatta has been a sailor’s way of re-emphasising the important virtue of pulling together in harmony, said a Navy release.
For the modern sea-going fraternity, it signifies team work, enthusiasm, camaraderie, and ‘josh’. Thus, winning the whaler boat pulling regatta traditionally became the epitome of strength, stamina, and excellence. The regatta is considered a signature event of the Navy, which requires the highest standards of physical and mental fitness as well as strength, team work, coordination, and sustained hard work, along with dedicated practice.
