kolkata the sea explorers institute sei on monday celebrated the golden jubilee of an adventure that had caught the imagination of the entire nation and announced a slew of initiatives postpandemicsei which was set up in 1987 by former members of the explorers club of india that had been founded by indias pioneering adventure sports enthusiast mihir sen will from this year train 500 students in scuba diving deepsea diving rescue and salvage operations till now we have been training around 200 students a year we have already trained 7000 people said sei chief operating officer ananda chatterjee sei has been training members of the national disaster response force and state disaster response force since 2002sei is also developing a course on navigation and radio communication for trawlers that are sometimes lost after encountering storms at sea also on the anvil is a plan to train local youths in the sunderbans to become first responders during cyclones and other disasters the uttarakhand and sikkim governments have also contacted us to conduct highaltitude diving training for dam maintenance said chatterjee whose father pinaki ranjan chatterjee had undertaken the great andaman expedition along with naval officer george albert duke in 1969the two had set off in a tiny wooden boat with just oars from man owar jetty on february 1 1969 with everest conqueror tenzing norgay flagging off the expedition to port blair with 13000km of sea in between the epic adventure was conceived by english channel conqueror mihir sen chatterjee then 23 and duke then 25 had for safety carried a lot of shark repellant as the waters were infested with sharksthe boat named kanhoji angre had no cover no sail and no motor no cabin for the men to sleep instead it had two watertight compartments that were full of air so that the boat would stay afloat even if it capsized these compartments were also used to store the sailors navigation books charts medicine and matches special provisions were made to carry 64 gallons of drinking water there were canvas bags to carry tinned food to last for 60 daysthe boat also had a lamp mast fitted with a radar reflector which would enable the boat to be picked up on the radar screen of seagoing vessels the crew also had a wireless transmitter set a transmitter radio but a week into the expedition the boat went off the radar on february 8on february 12 we were reported lost at sea and the next day all india radio began playing emotional music and devotional songs as though we were lost forever thankfully a search team found us alive on february 14 and the news was relayed back recounted dukethe duo had been caught in tidal currents and had encountered an unpredictable storm but more than anything else there was fear of sheer exhaustion taking over as they rowed eight to 18 hours a day but they endured it all and reached andaman on march 3 the adventure turned us