5 months ago
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INSV Kaundinya, the Navy’s pioneering stitched sailing vas built utilizing accepted techniques, is undertaking her maiden overseas voyage to Oman connected Monday (December 29, 2025).
The vessel, which volition beryllium flagged disconnected from Porbandar successful Gujarat for Muscat, symbolically retraces the historical maritime routes that connected India with the wider Indian Ocean.
“Unlike modern vessels, her woody planks are stitched unneurotic utilizing coconut coir enactment and sealed with earthy resins, reflecting a shipbuilding contented erstwhile prevalent on India’s coasts and crossed the Indian Ocean,” the Defence Ministry said.
This exertion enabled Indian mariners to undertake long-distance voyages to West Asia, Africa and Southeast Asia agelong earlier the advent of modern navigation and metallurgy, the officials said.
The task was undertaken done a tripartite statement betwixt the Ministry of Culture, the Indian Navy and Hodi Innovations arsenic portion of India’s efforts to rediscover and revive indigenous cognition systems.
What is INSV Kaundinya?
INSV Kaundinya is simply a stitched sail ship, based connected a 5th period CE ship depicted successful the paintings of Ajanta Caves. Following the keel laying successful September 2023, the vessel’s operation was undertaken utilizing a accepted method of stitching by a squad of skilled artisans from Kerala, led by maestro shipwright Babu Sankaran. Over respective months, the squad painstakingly stitched woody planks connected the ship’s hull utilizing coir rope, coconut fibre and earthy resin. The vessel was launched successful February 2025 astatine Goa.
The Indian Navy played a cardinal relation successful the project, overseeing the design, method validation, and operation process. With nary surviving blueprints oregon carnal remnants, the plan had to beryllium extrapolated from a two-dimensional creator iconography and the task demanded a unsocial interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeological interpretation, Naval architecture, hydrodynamic testing, and accepted craftsmanship, according to the Navy.
Navy formally inducted the naval sailing vas connected May 21 astatine the Karwar Naval base, successful Karnataka.
Significance down INSV Kaundinya’s operation
The recently inducted vas incorporates respective culturally important features. The sails show motifs of the Gandabherunda and the Sun, her bow bears a sculpted Simha Yali , and a symbolic Harappan benignant chromatic anchor adorns her deck, each constituent evoking the affluent maritime traditions of past India. Named aft Kaundinya, the Indian mariner who sailed crossed the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia, the vessel serves arsenic a tangible awesome of India’s long-standing traditions of maritime exploration, trade, and taste exchange, the Navy said.
