Ratnakar Dandekar and his son Prathamesh are considered to be among India’s premier boat builders. Their company, Hodi Innovations, located on the riverine Divar Island in Goa, has built celebrated sailing vessels such as the Mhadei and the Tarini, which have been used by the equally celebrated global circumnavigators Dilip Donde, Abhilash Tomy, and Varthika Joshi and her all-women crew. (Also Read | Why an Indian-American whiskey industry icon is training his sights on India ) The Dandekars mostly work with fibreglass, but right at this moment, they are engaging with a material they are not familiar with — wood.
Their brief, which came from high places in the government late last year, is to build a ‘stitched’ ship of the kind that sailed in the Indian Ocean in the first millennium of the Common Era. Archaeological evidence or records of the technique used to build such ships is scant, and their sole visual reference is a mural from the rock-cut Ajanta Caves that depicts a ship from the 4th century CE with a high stem and stern and oblong sails attached to three masts. The stitched ship project The stitched ship project is among the numerous projects undertaken by the government to revive traditional knowledge systems.
Backed by the Ministry of Culture and the Indian Navy, the project is the brainchild of Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, and author of, among others, The Ocean of Churn and Land of the Seven Rivers . But, what.