He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. Will he cross the Atlantic again? 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? The second trip was to raise the bar, Doba says. Rowers whove paddled the Atlantic an easier proposition because rowing allows a person to recruit leg and back muscles have strapped themselves to the floors of their cabins to avoid being bounced around during storms and concussed, or worse. Near his house, he said, there was a pond, behind the pond was a forest, in the forest there were mushrooms and behind all that was a small airport with gliders and storks, which migrated there for the summer. [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. In 1989, he spent 108 days on the . He had been taking long trips for decades, but he always slept on land. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. This time he would paddle from west to east, from New York to Lisbon where he would celebrate his 70th birthday after having spent . I was the one who would have to pay! he says. During the voyage, Mr. Doba endured a violent two-day storm that nearly swallowed him whole. The idea was to do the crossing unsupported. He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. He said many times that he didnt want to die in his bed, his son said. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Physically, Doba did not seem to experience any difficulty beyond some uncomfortable and persistent skin rashes caused by prolonged exposure to saltwater. 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. Water trapped in Olos storage lockers short-circuited the electric desalinator. Watch. AD: When I was alone on the ocean I had no fear for my life. Doba did not consent. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired engineer with a thick white beard and a piercing gaze, was a popular figure in Poland. 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. The most important kayaking trips of Aleksander Doba: 1989 -he broke a record f a distance, swam in a kayak during one calendar year: 5125 km, of which 5000 km were new trails, swam by him for the first time in his life. People ask me how old I am, and I say, I am not old! The plan was that if Doba was late, Gabriela would write with a stick in the dirt: I WAS HERE. His body appears to be assembled from parts belonging to people of vastly different ages. Doba being helped by the crew of Baltic Light in June 2017, when he had rudder problems during his North Atlantic crossing. Doba was ready, Chmielinski suspected, to just drift off into the eternal vastness and go down with his ship. ) so that she could compare it with the condition of her children upon their return. The devil, a German man, a Frenchman and a Polish man are all in a hot-air balloon, Wojciechowska said. 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 is a family man, whose positive attitude to life is contagious. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post. [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. Log In Once logged in, you can add biography in the database. The next day, hearing aids restored, Doba drove us to Police, and a few days later, he addressed a question that had been nagging at me: Why did he go on that third trip? His maternal grandmother was sent to Siberia. Directories Newly added. Then the devil says to the Frenchman, You must jump. The Frenchman says, What does this mean?. I even do oceanic expeditions as a tourist. He ate freeze-dried chicken tikka masala and the occasional raw tiny flying fish that landed on his deck. [5][6], Doba's first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was from Senegal to Brazil in 2010 and spanned 5394 kilometers. Dobas stinking foam sleeping pad and other gear from Olo remain, at Gabrielas request, all these months later, on the balcony. The Polish adventurer was world-famous for his oceanic kayak voyages. But Doba insisted. In both cases, they held me at gunpoint with rifles, pistols, and machetes. Over the years, he, like Gabriela, had made internal accommodations to his fathers adventures. 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. Id never seen him like that. Three times. Forty-two hours after leaving, they washed up back on the beach. 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. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. He is paddling for New Smyrna Beach, Florida, 4,700 nautical miles away. It is simply too dangerous. One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. He held a marine yacht skipper certificate. 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. (This did work, in that Doba managed to drill the holes, but he couldnt steer.) During the expedition storms threw him off course and he had to sail 1,300 additional nautical miles to . Phone, bad. He gave the thumbs down. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. 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 . His eyes blew up with conjunctivitis. The whole nation was starving. In photos from the ends of his trips, he looks ecstatic and feral, in the best possible sense, intrinsically wild and free. Aleksander Doba, 68 years old is the first to complete the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic. He kept chasing adventure. 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. Doba does not regret this experience. People stopped him on the street to take selfies. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. 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. When Mr. Doba encountered border patrol soldiers, they told him that he was in serious breach of the law. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. His father, Wincenty, was a mechanic. No retired man in Poland can afford to do these things, Doba explained. NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. Recently, just before his 71 st birthday, he sailed single-handed across the Atlantic for the third time in his kayak. He did explain to her how to boil water, which to this day she finds ridiculous. He relieved himself by leaning off the side or the stern. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world but to mainstream audiences when he kayaked across the Atlantic in . Doba with Olo, the kayak he used to cross the North Atlantic in 2017. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. Touch device users, explore by touch or . 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. These animals can sniff it out. 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. [2] This story is one of four extraordinary journeys published in the magazine's Voyages issue.Read the rest here: Doba describes the tedium as a form of dementia: Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of repetitions. The first time Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba tried to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean in 2007, he didn't get far. It was his 3rd crossing without a sail. He thought about his dead parents. Arminski, the boatbuilder, spent many hours trying to argue Doba out of it. Aboard Baltic Light, he ate a hot meal and took a bunch of selfies with the Filipino crew. But the inside of the apartment feels much better: shoes in the entrance hall; pencil marks of grandchildrens heights in the kitchen door jamb; atlases, kayaking trophies and snow globes of family photos in the living room. Doba and his wife, Gabriela, at home in Police. Nie chce byc malym szarym czlowiekiem, he told me. Every two weeks, he would make another loop. At the start of that trip, she weighed 700 kilograms, and she carried (among other things) two carbon-fiber paddles, five spray skirts to cover Dobas body while he paddled, two pairs of kayaking gloves, three pairs of sunglasses, two pairs of reading glasses, 10 boxes of waterproof matches, two big butchers knives, one electric desalinator, two manual desalinators, three floating smoke signals, nine red flares, a cooking stove and propane canisters, two flashlights, two headlamps, an iPad, a GoPro camera, 320 lithium batteries (for Olos satellite signaling devices), mineral supplements, a sewing kit, 175 chocolate bars, three toothbrushes, seven bottles of sunscreen, three liters of homemade wine, a pumice stone for the calluses on his hands, two pairs of sandals and an emergency fishing kit. Her last article for the magazine was about a Chinese mafia don. The 'extreme cruelty' around the global trade in frog legs, What does cancer smell like? Aleksander Doba is a Polish traveler and explorer. 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. [7][8] He was 65 years old when he undertook this journey. Suffering tends to do more for the flagellant than it does for the flagellants loved ones. I was just paddling down the river, he explained. Only one person had ever crossed the Atlantic in a kayak using solely muscle power, and he traveled island to island, from Newfoundland to Ireland. Brent Stirton/Getty Images, for The New York Times, Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times. Your . I did it with no stuntman, Doba told me proudly. The design by British civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a . How did this mountain lion reach an uninhabited island? After I downed it, she laughed. Mr. Dobas three trans-Atlantic voyages earned him Guinness World Records titles, and in recent years he enjoyed celebrity status in his native Poland. Aleksander Doba has died age 74 on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania on Monday February 22. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. I did not think I could find myself in something so downing, he texted to Chmielinski, somewhat incomprehensibly, two weeks later. After his salt-water-drenched clothes became too irritating, he navigated the rest of his trip buck naked. He slept no more than six hours a day in multiple installments, crammed into his cockpit on his side among five months' worth of food and equipment. F. Pinterest. It was raining. He wasnt a man who necessarily looked forward to spending Christmas with the family, his son Czeslaw said. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. The kayak would break into many pieces. So, wearing only his harness, Doba exited the cabin, crawled across the bucking deck with a spare sea anchor attached to a rope, tied the rope to his kayak and threw the anchor off the stern. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. [4][17] With his wife Gabriela he had two sons: Bartomiej and Czesaw. "Na szczycie Olek poprosi o 2 minuty przerwy, usiad na kamieniu i po prostu zasn", "Kayaker, 64, completes marathon paddle across Atlantic", "Landfall: Aleksander Doba reaches South America", "Kajakarstwo - Aleksander Doba przepyn Atlantyk", Unofficial blog for Aleksander Doba Transatlantic Kayak Crossing, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aleksander_Doba&oldid=1104141716, Recipients of the Order of Polonia Restituta, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 13 August 2022, at 00:00. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility. The departure for the second trip, from Portugal to Florida, turned out to be very abrupt. The 70-Year-Old Master Kayaker For a while the crossing was drama-free. Actualizado a 24/02/2021 12:40 CET. He kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean three times, the last time in 2017, when he was 70. [3], Doba first tried kayaking at age 34 on a trip organised by the company he was working for. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great kayaker Alesander Doba on February 22. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. Aleksander Doba (born 9 September 1946) is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. He talks about his amazing adventures with passion and energy. I dont like it at all. Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week. His father built him a bicycle from scrap parts, and when he was 15 he rode it across the country. In 1980, his co-workers asked him if he wanted to join their kayaking club, and soon he was spending all his weekends out on the water. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. 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. Chmielinski interpreted this communication blackout as a sign that Doba was deeply despairing, perhaps because he was alone again after being with the crew on Baltic Light, perhaps because, now that he had accepted help, he worried that he would not earn a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for kayaking solo from continent to continent unsupported. Doba was blown to the beach and called the trip off. The Polish native had departed from Lisbon, Portugal, on October 5, 2013, with the intention of paddling 5,400 miles across the Atlantic's widest point and arriving in Florida in mid-February. 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. The new year once started in Marchhere's why, Jimmy Carter on the greatest challenges of the 21st century, This ancient Greek warship ruled the Mediterranean, How cosmic rays helped find a tunnel in Egypt's Great Pyramid, Who first rode horses? 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. Doba had only wanted his phone repaired. Meet the man who solo kayaked the Atlantic Ocean - three times. Aleksander doba. He preferred to be dropped off on a cold river in the middle of the snow.. He married Gabriela Stucka in 1975, and they settled in a town called Police, where he got a job at a chemical plant. This is an order. And the German man jumps. A Record-Breaking Atlantic Crossing by Kayak. In the early 1970s, Mr. Doba graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. 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 . I hope they will learn not to be afraid to dream, turn dreams into plans, and bring plans to reality. Unloading OLO from the sloop that returned Doba back to the exact spot where he had been forced off course, the kayak's so-called wings, designed to act as roll bars to keep the vessel upright, broke. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. (That didnt work.) Along with jars of his wife's plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars . It was like my wishes came true. A crisis, in Dobas worldview, is an opportunity for triumph. Dobas maternal grandfather, a high-ranking officer in the czarist army, was poisoned in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. So Doba moves toward the crisis, just as he moves toward the suffering. Her department grew to 100 people from five. He grew up ice skating on ponds and skiing through forests. But by katorga, Doba does not mean an activity he does not wish to do. Bigger than the Atlantic! Doba chimed in. AD: Before the first Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, my wife tried very hard to make me drop such an idea. According to multiple Polish media reports . She threatened divorce. He explored countless Polish rivers, and he amassed records and firsts. 02/23/21 AT 12:35 PM. Corley, Apr 21, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating. He trained by jogging up and down the stairs of a high-rise building with a heavy backpack, and he took long daily hikes. He has kayaked solo across the Atlantic 3 times, most recently in 2017 at the age of 70. . It looks straight out of a dystopian young-adult novel in which the state is intent on creating little gray men. Without the SPOT, nobody would be able to find the kayak if they needed to rescue him. The rope tethering Doba to the kayak came undone. After he graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering, Doba met Gabriela Stucka, his future wife, on a backpacking trip. He does love Gabriela, however, and he does not want to cause her more pain. One day, a colleague of Dobas said the factorys kayaking club was going on a two-week expedition. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. But he had promised himself, when he left New Jersey, that he would kayak not just to Europe but to the Continent proper. Polish adventurer Aleksander Doba, who completed three solo kayak trips across the Atlantic, has died at the age of 74 during an attempt to scale the highest peak in Africa, his family said on . Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba begins his translatlantic kayak adventure from New York to Lisbon on May 29, 2016 in New York. At the time of this writing, real-time tracking indicates that Aleksander Doba is on or near the small French Island of Ushant on the south-western end of the English Channel. He playfully tapped the shells of turtles that swam alongside him. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired . Doba also called his wife, twice. If a breaking wave hit Olo with no sea anchor, Doba said, I knew I would roll over many times. After taking in the view, he sat on a rock to rest. When a few landed on my kayak, I didnt have to eat my lyophilized food for dinner that night.. After, on weekends Doba would put a kayak on a train, debark as close to a river as possible and walk the kayak, on a wheeled contraption built from bicycle and stroller parts, 25 miles if necessary to put in. Doba with the writer on the Brda River in central Poland in January. Doba signed up for the factory kayaking trip and went again the following year. Rather, he said, I was infected with a virus.. 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 am Polish. According to eyewitness reports he felt well the entire journey but after reaching the top asked for a two-minute break before posing for a photo. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. He was greeted by one journalist and the Polish ambassador. He was a few days shy of his 71st birthday. I was infected with a virus.. His hands and forearms look 30, straight off a Montana roper. Aleksander Doba spent 110 days alone at sea. Four days later, after capsizing repeatedly, Doba finally cleared the Sandy Hook peninsula and left lower New York Bay. A storm had damaged his rudder. Before the Iron Curtain fell, the Communist Party declared it illegal to kayak on the Baltic Sea, lest anyone defect. He used to take his two young sons on expeditions so demanding that his wife Gabriela would check their physical condition . The Olo, Doba's 2010 kayak. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. 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. 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. His hair and beard appear to be taken from a Michelangelo painting of God. He was unaccustomed to wearing pants. But after she got the bill for $500, she says, the desire to talk decreased. Polish sea kayaker Aleksander Doba - known for making the transatlantic journey from Europe to North America aboard a kayak - passed away this week. X In recent years, Mr. Doba enjoyed celebrity status in Poland. His kayak,I rowed varsity crew in highschool and got into kayaking and poling in college.
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