Doba returned to his cabin somewhat shocked to be alive. Explore. But this voyage was too dangerous, she told me, to keep her head where she liked it to be, stuck in the sand. So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. Dozens of sharks checked on me, but one was ready to attack me, and I had to whack his head with the paddle really hard to make him leave, Doba remembers. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. While the distance does not compare with the record for the longest ocean-crossing by kayak, held by Poland's Aleksander Doba for a 6558-kilometre journey from Portugal to Florida via Bermuda, the Tasman Sea is notorious for its unpredictable, difficult weather conditions. It's unique design is compromise between safety during extreme ocean challenge, and feeling that it should be close to spirit of kayaking. Polish Kayaker Is Paddling Across the Atlantic for the Third Time 69-year-old Aleksander Doba left New York on Sunday in a kayak bound for Portugal. The fact that Doba knows this is clear in his eyes. After another storm, Olos rudder was seriously damaged, so he reluctantly contacted his team via satellite phone seeking help. Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. Gabriela, she says, was to be honest, a little pissed that Doba was going again. I was in a pickle! To avoid the nightmare of quiet conformity, Doba told me he said to his mother-in-law, This is a good soup! Arminski agreed to build the boat, and in spring of 2010, Olo, as Doba named his kayak after his own nickname, Olek was complete. On it, he has written the names of rivers he has paddled. Aleksander Doba, honorary citizen of the city, is dead", "Why He Kayaked Across the Atlantic at 70 (for the Third Time)", "Aleksander Doba tym razem wituje z rodzin", "Aleksander Doba, Adventurers of the Year 2014/2015 - National Geographic", "Arsoba Travel:: sztuka podrowania - Kajakiem DOOKOA BAJKAU w pojedynk:: lato 2009", "Aleksander Doba - Samotnie Kajakiem Przez Atlantyk", "Wspomnienie Aleksandra Doby. Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer for the magazine. When Aleksander Doba kayaked into the port in Le Conquet, France, on Sept. 3, 2017, he had just completed his third and by far most dangerous solo trans-Atlantic kayak trip. When Aleksander Doba kayaked into the port in Le Conquet, France, on Sept. 3, 2017, he had just completed his third and by far most dangerous solo trans-Atlantic kayak trip. The whole nation was starving. First, five bandits robbed me for three hours. Its good?. During the trip, he struggled against storms; his rudder was damaged and had to be repaired by sailors from a merchant vessel. Sadly, he passed away this week while climbing Kilimanjaro. Aleksander Ludwik Doba was born on Sept. 9, 1946, in Swarzedz, Poland. Doba was a little disappointed. On April 19, 2014, Doba, who is now 68, paddled the final stroke of his 7,716-mile transatlantic journey, docking OLO, his 23-foot kayak, in a marina in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. He lost 14kg in 14 weeks of the journey. An expedition, he told me. His hands and forearms look 30, straight off a Montana roper. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. Doba was ready, Chmielinski suspected, to just drift off into the eternal vastness and go down with his ship. He also kayaked the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle; on that trip, he was thrown from his boat during a storm and woke up to the sound of his own screaming after washing ashore. sport. However, in Brazil, while running the Amazon in my kayak in 2011, I survived two bouts of rogues with firearms and machetes. In 2010, Doba spent 99 days of the First Transatlantic Kayak Expedition paddling 3,400 nautical miles (3,913 miles) across one of the narrowest points of the Atlantic, between Dakar, Senegal, and Acarau, Brazil. On the kayak. Ocean kayaking is catastrophically monotonous. Dobas apartment building is a five-story cube of blank concrete, with blank concrete stairwells. Will he cross the Atlantic again? NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. (Very fine, he said. For 110 days, Mr. Doba paddled eastward on his specially designed fiberglass kayak, Olo. He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. For a while, once again, on this second expedition, all was smooth. He then sat down on a rock and "just fell asleep".[19]. The fabric smelled horrendous and aggravated his skin, so he abandoned clothes. Doba had only wanted his phone repaired. But the community raised money for him, and on Oct. 3, 2013, off he went. Photo: Wikipedia. The professor eventually persuaded Doba to cross the southern Atlantic with him from Ghana to Brazil in separate one-man kayaks, lashing those kayaks together at night to make a platform on which to sleep. A real katorga, says Doba, who is Polish katorga being the Polish word for forced labor in Siberia. I am not German always 9 a.m. paddle, he explained. He spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. And yet Doba describes his youth as magical, almost fantastical. He was greeted by one journalist and the Polish ambassador. He talks about his amazing adventures with passion and energy. Shoot, the devil says. I am generally physically active, ride a bike, work in my garden, and enjoy walking.. Neither Gabriela nor Bartek took him to the airport. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. Then a woman who noticed me coughing approached with a little glass of thick red liquid that looked like cough syrup. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. Aleksander Doba, 70, completed his transatlantic journey on Sunday after setting off on the epic quest from New Jersey in May. His skin was bronzed and weathered, his beard long and tangled, but the 67-year-old's mood was upbeat as he raised his arms in triumph after a remarkable crossing that spanned 5,400 miles. At age 64, after 42 years of marriage, she still adores Doba, and her acceptance of him is absolute easier than it used to be, in fact. Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. All rights reserved. Transatlantic passenger crossings became faster, safer, and more reliable with the advent of steamships in the 19th century. [7][8] He was 65 years old when he undertook this journey. Mr. Dobas three daring voyages earned him Guinness World Records titles, and in 2017 he became the oldest person to kayak across the Atlantic. The air that day hovered around 40 degrees about 4 degrees Celsius. It is impossible to design a kayak that wont capsize on the North Atlantic, Arminski told me in his British-accented English, sitting behind his desk in Szczecin in a tidy V-neck sweater and a pressed shirt. In both cases, they held me at gunpoint with rifles, pistols, and machetes. This would have been Doba's third transatlantic crossing. She felt bad about it, she said, and she felt judged, but here we were, werent we? I never expected it would be so big, she said. In 1989, he surpassed the record for the most days paddled by a Polish man in a single year. His chest looks 50. Doba with Mr. Olek, the kayak he uses on rivers locally. Aleksander doba. In addition to Czeslaw, Mr. Doba is survived by his wife; another son, Bartek; a sister, Wanda Kedzia; and three grandchildren. He married Gabriela Stucka in 1975, and they settled in a town called Police, where he got a job at a chemical plant. Dobas response to Gabrielas concern about what hed do in a crisis, if the closest land was the bottom, was to say there will be no crisis. He started in Lisbon, Portugal on October 5th, 2013 and the goal was to arrive in Florida sailing 5,400 nautial miles. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Doba told me when I met him in Poland in January. F. In 2018, a Polish retiree named Aleksander Doba, at 71, completed his third trans-Atlantic solo crossing, in a 21 kayak he designed. Once Poland became a democracy, social structures and attitudes changed. During a storm, the water below the oceans surface stays relatively still; what moves radically are the waves. Doba accepted his suggestion that he paddle to Bermuda for a repair. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. Dobas goal was to go continent to continent between the mainlands, from Senegal to Brazil, unsupported. Wojciechowska drank a double cappuccino and told me that shed been engaged five times but never married she felt it would be impossible to follow her dreams with a husband. He was at sea for 110 consecutive days. He waited three days and still had no signal, so in hopes of getting Gabriela or Arminski to look into his phone problems, he pressed the help button on his SPOT device, a piece of gear that has become de rigueur among adventurers, as it can send emergency messages and GPS coordinates when a person is far off the grid. After taking in the view, he sat on a rock to rest. He has made his own bargain with the human condition. He rode through 30-foot waves. He studied the water closely. F. Pinterest. Alexander Doba returns to the Atlantic. Which travel companies promote harmful wildlife activities? How did he justify it to himself? Doba also brought two sailing harnesses, which resemble climbing harnesses but are worn on the chest instead of the legs; he uses these to attach himself with a carabiner to the boat. He paddled and he paddled and he paddled and he paddled, a real katorga. He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. Then, about three weeks into the trip, more storms arrived: Winds up to 55 knots created outsize waves, mountains of water racing toward the kayak, the entire surface of the sea lurching as if a stampede of elephants were running across a giant water bed. This time he would paddle from west to east, from New York to Lisbon where he would celebrate his 70th birthday after having spent . He communed with the turtles, whose shells he tapped while they swam alongside him to make sure they were alive, and the birds, who landed on Olo for a rest and often entered his cabin and did not want to leave. You can be made small by life or rage against it. A Polish grandfather on Sunday completed his third solo trans-Atlantic kayak crossing, arriving on the French coast 111 days after dipping his paddle into the waters off the US state of New Jersey. [15], Aleksander Doba was born 9 September 1946 in Swarzdz, near Pozna, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland and lived in Police near Szczecin, West Pomeranian Voivodeship. In 2010, when he kayaked from Senegal to Brazil, his skin broke out in salt-induced rashes, his fingernails nearly peeled off, and his eyes suffered from conjunctivitis. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean. [10], After resting there, he initially planned to paddle another 6,000 kilometers north along the shorelines of the Americas to Washington, D.C.[12] However, he eventually decided to transport his transatlantic kayak to Peru instead and embarked on a journey down the Amazon River but after being attacked and robbed twice in Brazil he had to quit. Long COVID patients turn to unproven treatments, Why evenings can be harder on people with dementia, This disease often goes under-diagnosedunless youre white, This sacred site could be Georgias first national park, See glow-in-the-dark mushrooms in Brazils other rainforest, 9 things to know about Holi, Indias most colorful festival, Anyone can discover a fossil on this beach. The 70-Year-Old Master Kayaker He did explain to her how to boil water, which to this day she finds ridiculous. He went on to win the gold medal at the Open Academic Polish Championships in Whitewater Kayaking in 2003 at age 57 and defended the title the next year. At the age of 70, Aleksander Doba became a legend with the kayak. After four months at sea, Polish adventure kayaker Aleksander Doba has arrived in Bermuda where he will make repairs to his broken rudder before continuing o. I was not sure if they would leave me alive. He slept in a tiny coffin-shaped cabin that he entered by sliding through a portal, and when flying fish landed on his deck he snacked on them alive. The key to surviving a serious storm, Doba says, was to keep his kayak oriented with the stern perpendicular to the waves, so that those waves hit the narrow end of the vessel, instead of broadsiding the boat and rolling it over. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. Or the afternoon, a week later, on that same river, when he succumbed to the temptation of eating pancakes, tomato soup and rice at the Milk Bar restaurant when he should have been at his campsite, by his kayak, eating cold canned goulash in order to condition his body for arctic temperatures. Do you know how fast they go? he said. Previous Story: 8.31.17. Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. Bright green moss covered the trees, egrets stretched like sheets blowing on a line and the occasional ray of sun broke through the low clouds. "Video: People's Choice Adventurer of the Year Aleksander Doba", "Aleksander Doba Completes His Third Atlantic Crossing in a Kayak", "Police. AD: Before the first Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, my wife tried very hard to make me drop such an idea. The roughly 5,000-year-old human remains were found in graves from the Yamnaya culture, and the discovery may partially explain their rapid expansion throughout Europe. Even here at home, Dobas physicality is sui generis. The most serious trouble came for Doba when he hit a storm that lasted two days. (This worked a little, but not entirely.). Doba paddled naked. Polish adventurer Aleksander "Olek" Doba paddles across the Atlantic by Kayak from Lisbon, Portugal to New Smyrna Beach in Florida:. Then Doba cut the bent portion off the pin with a hacksaw blade hed brought along and jury-rigged a way to control the rudder with carabiners. In video footage of the hour before he left, Doba looks wrecked exhausted and on the verge of tears. Kind, gracious, enthusiastic Poles kept bringing me shots of alcohol, which I tried to wave off. He designed an unsinkable kayak that contained food lockers and a cabin to sleep in. . Shortly after, a huge Greek ship steamed alongside Doba, seeking to rescue him. Doba flew back to Poland; returned to his hometown, Police, in the countrys northwest, where he had been managing maintenance and repairs at an enormous chemical factory; and swore off kayaking with a partner ever again. These skeletons may have the answer, Scientists are making advancements in birth controlfor men, Blood cleaning? Dobas sleeping cabin, which he reaches by sliding himself through a portal the size of a laptop, affords him, when hes lying down, 15 inches of headroom. His kayak,I rowed varsity crew in highschool and got into kayaking and poling in college. The design by British civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a . Heres the technology that helped scientists find itand what it may have been used for. The Pole has announced that he will set off in May on what will be his third - and possibly toughest - Atlantic Crossing. It is simply too dangerous. The first person in the world to paddle from Europe to America in a kayak across the Atlantic Ocean's widest point, Aleksander Doba also holds the record for the number of days (142) spent in a kayak in the ocean. Thus, most likely assuming that Doba was deranged he was, after all, a tiny speck bobbing in a vast universe of water the ship turned around and tried to rescue him again. Doba signed up for the factory kayaking trip and went again the following year. The Polish adventurer was world-famous for his oceanic kayak voyages. I am only 67 years young! We know who this is. [13], On October 5, 2013, at age 67, he departed from Lisbon (Portugal) for a second transatlantic voyage, with the intention of paddling 5,400 miles across the Atlantic's widest point. His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. Three years later in 2013 he crossed the . When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. A freighter picked him up, and its Filipino crew repaired the rudder. Three times. Her department grew to 100 people from five. Aleksander Doba died as he lived, in pursuit of adventure, passing away on the very summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 74. His father, Wincenty, was a mechanic. Adventure paddler Aleksander Doba willed his 71-year-old body and 1,600-pound kayak through a 4,000-mile trans-Atlantic journey AD: When I was alone on the ocean I had no fear for my life. When Mr. Doba encountered border patrol soldiers, they told him that he was in serious breach of the law. UPDATE: The votes are inmore than 521,000 of them, more than ever beforeand we have a winner. By ELIZABETH WEIL Without the wings, the kayak had greater lateral stability and was less sensitive to wind. Aleksander Doba. She did not want to spend her life stressed, waiting for his return. After his salt-water-drenched clothes became too irritating, he navigated the rest of his trip buck naked. He did not want to be saved, so he waved the Greeks off. Imagine a plane the size of a kayak hitting turbulence, but in water rather than air; at sea level, water is hundreds of times denser. We watched them in his living room together with Gabriela. But after she got the bill for $500, she says, the desire to talk decreased. Today. By choosing it, he casts himself in the role of hero, not victim. During the third rescue attempt he yelled a Polish vulgarity. These involved such things as catamarans sailing in from the Bahamas and helicopters dropping rudder-repair gift packages out of the sky. Doba tried to sleep during the day but couldnt, so he tried to paddle during the day and nearly got sunstroke. Aleksander Doba spent 110 days alone at sea. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. But then Doba turned his SPOT and his phone back on. Aleksander Doba is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. Even in seemingly reasonable conditions, rogue waves can cause havoc. They are falling, falling a catastrophe is about to happen. So Doba moves toward the crisis, just as he moves toward the suffering. When he was too far from shore to see any birds, Doba was surrounded instead by marine wildlife, from fish and dolphins to turtles, whales, and sharks. He found a piece of grass to end his trip as to him the . I was not in a great state. To be precise: I was a Jew with the flu about to go kayaking in Poland in January not a setup likely to end well. It should be noted that he accomplished it using only weekends and normal, 26-day leave. He arrived at New Smyrna Beach, Florida on April 19, 2014. The huge group of his supporters keeps growing . I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility. Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. If . She also left her daughter at age 8 months to go climb a mountain in Antarctica because she was trying to complete the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each continent, and achieving that goal, at that time, felt like a matter of life or death. Without the SPOT, nobody would be able to find the kayak if they needed to rescue him. It was raining. He said it because he has reimagined the concept of crisis, just as he has reimagined the concept of suffering. This is the only one thing you can do.. Every two weeks, he would make another loop. The risk of kayaking the North Atlantic, Arminski believed, was irresponsibly, even amorally high. Aleksander Doba is no stranger to long ocean crossings. His odyssey concluded that September when he paddled into the port in Le Conquet, France. Doba told his wife that he was going to try to cross the Atlantic again. (Doba doesnt speak much English, so we communicated through a translator.) AD: No, although 40 nights of strenuous effort to break out of the trap of unfavorable winds in the Bermuda Triangle drained me very much. Sea kayaks are seaworthy small boats with a covered deck and the ability to incorporate a spray deck.They trade off the manoeuvrability of whitewater kayaks for higher cruising speed, cargo capacity, ease of straight-line paddling, and comfort for long journeys. He held a marine yacht skipper certificate. [11] All the big muscles in the body are useless. Please be respectful of copyright. By ELIZABETH WEILPhotographs by JOAKIM ESKILDSEN On the island, after 143 days at sea, Doba could hardly walk, and by the time he was ready to return to the Atlantic, it was late March, and the weather was turning bad. Brent Stirton/Getty Images, for The New York Times, Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times. Doba with Olo, the kayak he used to cross the North Atlantic in 2017. Trans Atlantic kayak completed by Aleksander Doba. Dne 22. nora 2021 zemel ve vku 74 let pi vstupu na Kilimandro polsk dobrodruh Aleksander Olek" Doba, kter byl znm hlavn svmi peplavbami Atlantskho ocenu. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. [4][17] With his wife Gabriela he had two sons: Bartomiej and Czesaw. He texted Arminski and Piotr Chmielinski, a Polish kayaker who in the mid-1980s, shortly after hed defected to the United States, was part of the first team to paddle the length of the Amazon. Anyone can read what you share. According to multiple Polish media reports . But she was charmed by his impish streak his stories of smuggling ski boots back from East Germany by walking across the border in them; the beard he grew over a summer holiday, so he could return to university and his mandatory military training as the only soldier in Poland with facial hair. A crisis, in Dobas worldview, is an opportunity for triumph. For a while the crossing was drama-free. Bigger than the Atlantic! Doba chimed in. She is also co-author of The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After, which will be published next month. The wild-bearded Polish super-kayaker Aleksander Doba died as he lived, in pursuit of adventure, passing away on the very summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 74. One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. It was like my wishes came true. His hair and beard appear to be taken from a Michelangelo painting of God. (This did work, in that Doba managed to drill the holes, but he couldnt steer.) Medicine! she said. Aleksander Doba has died age 74 on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania on Monday February 22. Your . One afternoon Doba parked his Mazda 5 minivan in the lot beside his apartment building, pointed to a nearby forest of Scots pines standing rigid and competing for light and said, amused, Sometimes we have the great adventure of going out there to drink a beer.. Among Dobas bigger regrets in life are the times when he has succumbed, when he has perceived and reacted to suffering in conventional ways for instance, the night in April 1989 when he built a fire in order to make tea and dry his clothes while paddling on the Vistula River near the city of Plock, in central Poland. In mid-September 2013, Doba still did not possess all the gear he wanted to take on his trip. Aboard Baltic Light, he ate a hot meal and took a bunch of selfies with the Filipino crew. On April 19 at 4:18 PM, Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba, 67, became the first person to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean at its widest point - 5,400 . I was just paddling down the river, he explained. 2013Aleksander Doba67. When does spring start? But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. Replies: 5 Views: 2,045. . Olo is 300 kilograms empty. He grew up ice skating on ponds and skiing through forests. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Agence France-Presse Getty Images, Mr. Doba once said that his hunger to cross the Atlantic was not really his idea. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. Gabriela did not believe he would. El polaco Aleksander Doba, que se convirti en la primera persona en cruzar el ocano Atlntico en kayak y en solitario a los 65 aos de edad, falleci el . He intended to keep muscle tone in his legs by swimming, but he had to abort that plan because his body in the water attracted sharks. 02/23/21 AT 12:35 PM. 70-year old Polish long-distance kayaker Aleksander Doba has embarked on a third attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a kayak, departing New York City for Portugal, on a three-month long, 3000 . My phone exploded with hysterical texts from home. Then I asked the local guides with him, Do you know who this man is? And they said: Yes. During the worst of it, the rope on his sea anchor broke. In 2013, when he paddled from Portugal to Florida, a Greek tanker made the mistake of trying to rescue him. [2], Doba has also paddled in a kayak with others around the Baltic Sea (in 1999, 80 days, 4227km), from Police to Narvik (in 2000, 101 days, 5369km) and around Lake Baikal (in 2009, 41 days, 2000km).
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