Why Mumbai's private boats sailed through rain test

Last week's downpour took the wind out of Mumbai's sails. The city barely managed to keep its head above the water-lo gged roads, forcing many owners to abandon their high-end luxury cars in the middle of the streets. Luckily, not all the big boy toys suffered this fate. Specifically, the sail boats.

"There was no impact [of the rain] on the sail boats. Since Mumbai doesn't have a marina, the boats are dry docked," said Ashish Hemrajani, CEO, Bookmyshow. Dry docking is a process of stowing away the boat on land.

There is a chance that most boats may not even have been in Mumbai. As Ravi Mariwala, MD, Scientific Precision, and the owner of a boat named Blazing Surmai shared, "Many sail boats, including mine, are taken out of water, covered in plastic and stored on land in Belapur [a satellite town close to Mumbai].

The bigger ones are sometimes sent off to Goa or Alang in Gujarat. Those with holiday homes in Alibaug may put their boats in parking spaces there." With the rains on their way out, the boats should start coming back post Dussehra (mid-October), says Mariwala.

While good sailing conditions will be looked forward to, there is perhaps a special thrill in chasing the storm. "There is no feeling like seeing a storm approaching and preparing to sail through that," Arvind Rao, ex-CEO, OneMobile, said.