It should be noted that he accomplished it using only weekends and normal, 26-day leave. Doba was born in 1946 in Swarzedz, Poland, right after the end of World War II, when the country had been run over by the Soviets and the Germans, then bombed to dust. He was greeted by one journalist and the Polish ambassador. His son Czeslaw said the cause was asphyxia resulting from high-altitude pulmonary edema. (Doba doesnt speak much English, so we communicated through a translator.) Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. Behind me, steering us among the 60 other kayakers and dozens of fallen trees, Doba fidgeted in his seat, like an ADHD kid in class. Juan Villarino waits for a ride in the Namibian desert. I was not sure if they would leave me alive. She did not want to spend her life stressed, waiting for his return. He paddled and he paddled and he paddled and he paddled, a real katorga. I even do oceanic expeditions as a tourist. When he couldnt sleep, because of the unrelenting stuffiness of his cabin and the waves crashing through the portal onto his head, Doba thought about his wife, children and his young granddaughter. He married Gabriela Stucka in 1975, and they settled in a town called Police, where he got a job at a chemical plant. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. Then Doba sketched out a design for a new boat that could make the trip. Gabrielas accommodations to Dobas lifestyle started in the late 1980s, when Doba became obsessed with kayaking and began insisting that Gabriela drop him and his kayak by the side of the road on the way to her mothers house for Christmas, and then pick up him and his kayak at a prearranged point on her way back home after a few days. He started in Lisbon, Portugal on October 5th, 2013 and the goal was to arrive in Florida sailing 5,400 nautial miles. Aleksander Doba, a 64-year-old native of Poland, took off from Dakar, capital of the west African nation of Senegal, back on Oct. 26. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility. Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. The rope tethering Doba to the kayak came undone. For Aleksander Doba, pitting himself against the wide-open sea storms, sunstroke, monotony, hunger and loneliness is a way to feel alive in old age. Still, Doba had no reason to plot a trip across the Atlantic . 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. He was still close to the New Jersey shore, so he landed at Barnegat Bay, ate a steak, slept at a hotel and continued on his way. Along with jars of his wifes plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars and homemade wine. Doba signed up for the factory kayaking trip and went again the following year. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. 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. I wished him luck in reaching the summit, Mr. Wawrzyniak said in a phone interview. So the devil says to the German man: You must jump. Doba returned to his cabin somewhat shocked to be alive. 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. When people are young, sometimes they are very jealous, she said, and want to keep a piece of their partner for themselves. It looks good, it smells good, probably everybody likes it. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post. The second trip was to raise the bar, Doba says. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. I paddle when I would like. His skin broke out in salt-induced rashes, including blisters in his armpits and groin. Then she sat me down at a nearby restaurant, ordered pierogies and borscht and told me a joke. Kayak fishing became very popular during the recession of around 2008-2010 when gas prices were soaring and recreational boating was becoming too expensive for . The brain is removed from the process. Alone at sea without his hearing aids, Doba joked, he grew so disoriented that he started shouting at himself so that I could hear. (Doba is fairly deaf but didnt bring the aids along because theyre expensive and not waterproof, and there was no one to talk to anyway.) The World's Greatest Hitchhiker 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. On Sunday, May 7 2017, Alexander "Olek" Doba, took off from Sandy Hook Bay in New York City in his well-known kayak "OLO". Three times. [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). Log In Once logged in, you can add biography in the database. In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across . As a young man in Communist Poland, he had joined a local kayaking club, and he took to the sport avidly. Ocean kayaking is catastrophically monotonous. Transatlantic passenger crossings became faster, safer, and more reliable with the advent of steamships in the 19th century. Aleksander Doba on February 16, 2015 at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw, Poland. The ships captain didnt think it was a great idea to set this rash-covered, sleep-deprived 70-year-old man back in the ocean alone. [7] Aleksander Ludwik Doba was born on Sept. 9, 1946, in Swarzedz, Poland. 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. 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. The fact that Doba knows this is clear in his eyes. Kayak legend Aleksander Doba (74 years) Dies on Kilimanjaro Summit. Explore. This is an order. And the German man jumps. Doba began planning it, of course, a few days after he returned from Florida. She threw herself into her work, which had become far more rewarding than she ever imagined it could when she trained as a social worker in the 1970s. Then he paddled to the French shore. Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba begins his translatlantic kayak adventure from New York to Lisbon on May 29, 2016 in New York. But then Doba turned his SPOT and his phone back on. Nonetheless, Gabriela was not prepared for Dobas first trans-Atlantic expedition. Everyone who cared about Doba opposed his third expedition the cold and stormy North Atlantic, from New Jersey to France. AD: I'm not going to repeat paddling the Atlantic Ocean, but paddling something else maybe. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. But even if I did, censorship would not let it go., After a storm on June 16, 2017, Doba emerged from his cabin to find that the large pin that attached Olos rudder to the stern was seriously bent. Doba was blown to the beach and called the trip off. It didnt work. (This worked a little, but not entirely.). AD: OLO is 23 feet long and three feet wide and weighs 1,100 pounds, and I used a nine-foot-long kayak paddle. The whole nation was starving. 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. 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. It was in 2010 that he started seriously planning to cross the Atlantic. The first time Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba tried to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean in 2007, he didn't get far. A former chemical plant engineer who lived in a little river town, Mr. Doba had long been the most accomplished kayaker in his country. He preferred to be dropped off on a cold river in the middle of the snow.. He paddled the length of the river in the mid-1980s not 1980 and it was after he moved to the United States, not before. [20] In 2019 he participated in the Polish version of "The Mole" (Agent Gwiazdy), he was eliminated in the 3rd episode and came in 11th. 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. Doba also called his wife, twice. kontakt: aleksanderdoba@gmail.com Heres why each season begins twice. The plan was that if Doba was late, Gabriela would write with a stick in the dirt: I WAS HERE. When the ship circled back to him again, Mr. Doba shouted a vulgarity in Polish, and they left for good. Adventure paddler Aleksander Doba willed his 71-year-old body and 1,600-pound kayak through a 4,000-mile trans-Atlantic journey How did this mountain lion reach an uninhabited island? 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. When he saw shooting stars at night, he made wishes that, he said, later came true. One day, a colleague of Dobas said the factorys kayaking club was going on a two-week expedition. A breaking wave can do whatever it wants to a kayak. There was no engineering Olo for this. So Doba moves toward the crisis, just as he moves toward the suffering. 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 . Aleksander Doba in 2016. Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. I never expected it would be so big, she said. "Video: People's Choice Adventurer of the Year Aleksander Doba", "Aleksander Doba Completes His Third Atlantic Crossing in a Kayak", "Police. A real katorga, says Doba, who is Polish katorga being the Polish word for forced labor in Siberia. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. Trans-Atlantic kayaker Aleksander Doba, 67, was 110 nautical miles southwest of Bermuda on Wednesday [Feb 19], paddling towards the island to affect repairs to the rudder of his kayak. He ate freeze-dried chicken tikka masala and the occasional raw tiny flying fish that landed on his deck. Hitting the Atlantic ocean the following day, he had waited almost a year for another chance to continue his Third Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, which began on May 29, 2016 . But Mr. Doba insisted, and he became a blip in the ocean all over again. He was, by then, 90 percent of the way across the ocean but had spent the last six weeks paddling in circles in the Bermuda Triangle, trapped by wind and currents. (This did work, in that Doba managed to drill the holes, but he couldnt steer.) [3], Doba first tried kayaking at age 34 on a trip organised by the company he was working for. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. I know you will not jump. And the Polish man jumps., Wojciechowska looked at me squarely, to make sure I understood. [7][8] He was 65 years old when he undertook this journey. Aleksander Doba (9 September 1946 22 February 2021) was a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. His father, Wincenty, was a mechanic. For a while, once again, on this second expedition, all was smooth. His maternal grandmother was sent to Siberia. I consider myself to be a tourist, he explains. I am only 67 years young! He is the king of the ocean., Aleksander Doba, Who Kayaked Across the Atlantic, Dies at 74, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/world/europe/aleksander-doba-dead.html. The whale swam here, and there, all around my kayak. In October 2010, Doba voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean by kayak, from Senegal to Brazil and completed his trip in February 2011. Aleksander Doba appears to be one such individual. He studied the water closely. Still, the trip was perfect. F. Pinterest. 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! But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. A crisis, in Dobas worldview, is an opportunity for triumph. An elementary school honored him with a statue in his scruffy, bearded likeness. Within a week, however, Doba let go and agreed to have a freighter that was passing nearby pluck him out of the water and repair his rudder with its welding tools. It felt good. Doba traveled an average of 30 miles a day, often paddling at night, when the temperatures dropped. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility, he told The Times. Chmielinski and others came up with what Doba describes as exotic and expensive methods of rescue. [4] He quickly started going on kayaking expeditions regularly. Sean Dudley. In three weeks, Ill be 71, he says in one. Hed been at sea 110 days, alone, having last touched land that May at New Jerseys Barnegat Bay. Aleksander Doba died as he lived, in pursuit of adventure, passing away on the very summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 74. She knew I didnt like it.. Doba tried to heat the pin with his camping stove and smash it straight. Sadly, he passed away this week while climbing Kilimanjaro. 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. It is simply too dangerous. He took us on long trips, only him and us both, in the middle of nowhere, and we hated that, Bartek recalled. He was pummeled again by wind and waves. One year during the kayaking convention, Doba giddily reported, It was minus 18 degrees, and the number of people who showed up was the same!. Shoot, the devil says. Along the way, he was thrown from his kayak in a storm. He used to take his two young sons on expeditions so demanding that his wife Gabriela would check their physical condition . Forty-two hours after leaving, they washed up back on the beach. Can we bring a species back from the brink? The kayak OLO was professionally designed and made in Andrzej Arminski shipyard located in Szczecin, Poland . He spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. Watch. The primary challenge is not physical. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. These involved such things as catamarans sailing in from the Bahamas and helicopters dropping rudder-repair gift packages out of the sky. AD: When I was alone on the ocean I had no fear for my life. His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. Medicine! she said. This was his second crossing, and he estimates that, due to his drift in currents, he paddled some 7,000 miles - this from a 67 year old man sporting a long, grey beard. 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. found: Ocean to piku, 2018: page 4 of cover (Aleksander Doba; in 2010 became first person in the world to cross the Atlantic Ocean by kayak) found : Wikipedia, viewed Oct. 25, 2019 (Aleksander Doba; born Sept. 9, 1946, in Swarzdz; Polish kayaker known for his ocean-crossing voyages; lives in Police near Szczecin, Poland) His fingernails and toenails just about peeled off. Please upgrade your browser. 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. He did have a satellite phone, and he texted with Arminski, who, as his trip navigator, sent a regular forecast for wind and weather. After taking in the view, he sat on a rock to rest. He tried to drill holes in the rudder and attach the rudder to the stern with plastic ties. I was infected with a virus. In 2003, when he was already the most seasoned kayaker in Poland, a Polish professor approached him to get advice on his quest to kayak across the Baltic Sea. The idea was to do the crossing unsupported. Today. He relieved himself by leaning off the side or the stern. Doba was a little disappointed. Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. This does not feel good.. 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. Nae redakce mla tu est udlat s Olekem rozhovor v roce 2015, kdy zskal ocenn Dobrodruh roku od National Geographic a kdy ml za sebou teprve dv peplavby Atlantiku. We know who this is. After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his . In 1989, he surpassed the record for the most days paddled by a Polish man in a single year. 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. Someone had forgotten to fund the prepaid credit card that covered the bill. Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. The combination of a stable kayak and a higher sitting position make the sit-on-top or SOT kayaks a better design for fishing. This would have been Doba's third transatlantic crossing. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. Yet, at least for me, the river was magic calm, mysterious and alive. 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. A freighter picked him up, and its Filipino crew repaired the rudder. Create Biography . He passed out. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. But still, I was so happy Id gotten away. So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. He rode through 30-foot waves. However, in Brazil, while running the Amazon in my kayak in 2011, I survived two bouts of rogues with firearms and machetes. Joakim Eskildsen is a Danish photographer based outside Berlin. His desire to conquer the sea grew from an innocent idea that gradually consumed him: He had kayaked everything else, so why not the Atlantic Ocean? 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. I do not want to be a little gray man. This is a common expression in Poland and a good motto for us all. Then I saw it: a huge head, sticking out of the ocean, he told Canoe & Kayak magazine in 2014. It started with a small diatribe on the tyranny of politeness that dictates a houseguest must always say he likes everything his host serves him and the problem that results: Youre fed food you dont like again and again. When he arrived in Brazil he weighed 64kg. . Doba started talking about his second trans-Atlantic trip a few days after he returned from the first. Many things can go wrong while at sea, and if something does go wrong, help can be . Doba accepted his suggestion that he paddle to Bermuda for a repair. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. But after she got the bill for $500, she says, the desire to talk decreased. Photo: Wikipedia. A week later, three bandits went through my stuff for half an hour. When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. ' laughs intrepid kayaker Aleksander Doba. Id never seen him like that. Three years later in 2013 he crossed the . Doba being helped by the crew of Baltic Light in June 2017, when he had rudder problems during his North Atlantic crossing. If you arent willing to suffer, you can do nothing. 02/23/21 AT 12:35 PM. Trans Atlantic kayak completed by Aleksander Doba. Mr. Dobas three daring voyages earned him Guinness World Records titles, and in 2017 he became the oldest person to kayak across the Atlantic. His first crossing was in 2011, from Senegal, West Africa, to Brazil, a 99-day journey. Raspberry vodka! Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic solo by the longest route, unaided and without a sail. He trained by jogging up and down the stairs of a high-rise building with a heavy backpack, and he took long daily hikes. Aleksander Doba, 68 years old is the first to complete the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic. He said it because he has reimagined the concept of crisis, just as he has reimagined the concept of suffering. Doba responded, In that case, Ill be on my way.. If . A documentary about the life of Aleksander Doba entitled Happy Olo was released in 2017. He died while climbing Kilimanjaro after reaching the mountain summit. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. He did it three times, setting records and becoming a national hero in Poland. But the community raised money for him, and on Oct. 3, 2013, off he went. We watched them in his living room together with Gabriela. It's unique design is compromise between safety during extreme ocean challenge, and feeling that it should be close to spirit of kayaking. The devil, a German man, a Frenchman and a Polish man are all in a hot-air balloon, Wojciechowska said. His father built him a bicycle from scrap parts, and when he was 15 he rode it across the country. Then I asked the local guides with him, Do you know who this man is? And they said: Yes. Still, Doba refused. Replies: 5 Views: 2,045. . Then he sat down and fell asleep.. On February 22, Aleksander Doba made the last few strides to the top of Kilimanjaro, a pleased 74-year-old man, waving to fellow climbers with his envy-inducing muscular arms, a smile beaming from behind the curls of a wild beard. ) so that she could compare it with the condition of her children upon their return. However, in general, from my very low point of observation, the ocean looked clean. He is one of two people in the world to kayak across the Atlantic without a sail. This site is to promote polish paddler Aleksander Doba and his highly respectable . They offered to throw him ropes. These skeletons may have the answer, Scientists are making advancements in birth controlfor men, Blood cleaning? [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. In 1989, he spent 108 days on the . On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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..

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