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INS Sudarshini, the Indian Navy's sail training ship, arrived in Barcelona, Spain on 1 September 2026 as part of her ongoing transoceanic expedition Lokayan 26.
During the port call the ship will conduct professional and cultural engagements with the Spanish Navy and other maritime stakeholders, with sea trainees taking part in seamanship exchanges.
INS Sudarshini was opened to visitors on 4 September 2026, presented as an opportunity to experience India's maritime traditions and its naval training tradition.
Sail training ship used to train officer cadets and Coast Guard personnel in traditional seamanship and long-range ocean navigation; India's second indigenously built sail training ship, commissioned on 27 January 2012. A three-masted barque of about 54 metres carrying 20 sails, capable of operating under sail or power.
The Indian Navy's first sail training ship and the class of which Sudarshini is a follow-on. Commissioned in 1997, launched on 1 December 1995 and built in Goa to a design by the British naval architect Colin Mudie.
A 56-foot sailing vessel — a sailing yacht rather than a training barque — used for long-distance expeditions. She carried Navika Sagar Parikrama II, the dual-handed global circumnavigation by Lt Cdr Dilna K and Lt Cdr Roopa A, flagged off from Goa on 2 October 2024 and completed on 29 May 2025.
A sail training ship carries no operational role: it fights nothing and escorts nothing. Its purpose is that sail imposes conditions no powered warship does. A cadet on a barque must read wind, sea state and weather directly, because the ship's motion depends on them rather than on a throttle; work aloft on rigging demands physical courage and precise teamwork under time pressure; and a long ocean passage under sail forces navigation, watchkeeping and endurance to be practised for weeks rather than demonstrated in an exercise. Navies that retain sail training — India, the United States, Germany, Japan, Portugal and many others — do so for that reason, and a secondary one: a tall ship in a foreign port is an instrument of maritime diplomacy that a frigate cannot be, drawing visitors aboard and taking part in international tall-ship gatherings. Lokayan 26 does both jobs at once, training over 200 Navy and Coast Guard personnel while making 18 foreign port calls.
Simple Analogy: It is the reason pilots still train on light aircraft: the automation is removed so that the underlying skill has to be real.
General Awareness > Indian Navy — Ships, Expeditions and Exercises
General Awareness > Defence Current Affairs
GS Paper 2 > India's Maritime Diplomacy and Outreach
Naval ships, expeditions and exercises are steady material in defence and SSC general awareness, and named expeditions like Lokayan and Navika Sagar Parikrama recur across cycles.
A vessel operated to train naval cadets in seamanship, navigation and endurance under sail rather than for combat or patrol duties.
A sailing ship rig with three or more masts, of which the aftmost is fore-and-aft rigged and the others square-rigged; INS Sudarshini is a three-masted barque.
INS Sudarshini's transoceanic sail expedition flagged off from Kochi on 20 January 2026, covering over 22,000 nautical miles and 18 foreign ports across 13 countries.
Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions — the maritime outreach vision that frames the expedition's partnership activities with host nations.