Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Agence France-Presse Getty Images, Mr. Doba once said that his hunger to cross the Atlantic was not really his idea. Every time he closed his eyes, Doba told me, I dreamed I was paddling in the winter in Poland. He lost 45 pounds. Gabriela did not believe he would. (Honestly, you dont need the details.) He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. He held a marine yacht skipper certificate. Unauthorized use is prohibited. 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. [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. Chmielinski had a hard time finding a ship captain on the island who was willing, in dangerous weather, to put Doba back out in the ocean near where hed gone off course. He had been taking long trips for decades, but he always slept on land. Arminski agreed to build the boat, and in spring of 2010, Olo, as Doba named his kayak after his own nickname, Olek was complete. (See map on left). The design by British civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a . Doba with Mr. Olek, the kayak he uses on rivers locally. He did explain to her how to boil water, which to this day she finds ridiculous. The devil, a German man, a Frenchman and a Polish man are all in a hot-air balloon, Wojciechowska said. Along with jars of his wifes plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars and homemade wine. If a breaking wave hit Olo with no sea anchor, Doba said, I knew I would roll over many times. In the spring of 2017, he began his third trans-Atlantic crossing the one that garnered the most media attention when he paddled out from New Jersey. Doba started talking about his second trans-Atlantic trip a few days after he returned from the first. 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) No retired man in Poland can afford to do these things, Doba explained. This would have been Doba's third transatlantic crossing. *The official fanpage of Aleksander Doba. But this trip felt different. The 69-year old paddler who gained recognition as a Nat Geo Adventurer of the Year back in 2015 for his 7716 mile (12,417 km) crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, is getting ready to do it all over again. After Gabriela told me about Christmas, Doba began telling a story. If . [3], Doba first tried kayaking at age 34 on a trip organised by the company he was working for. Doba did not consent. I consider myself to be a tourist, he explains. Doba describes the tedium as a form of dementia: Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of repetitions. Doba tried to heat the pin with his camping stove and smash it straight. My flu lingered. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. The first time I visited my future mother-in-law, she served ducks blood soup. Her department grew to 100 people from five. 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? A Record-Breaking Atlantic Crossing by Kayak. After his salt-water-drenched clothes became too irritating, he navigated the rest of his trip buck naked. So Doba moves toward the crisis, just as he moves toward the suffering. He passed out. How did he justify it to himself? Then the devil gets to the Polish man. He tries the reasons he used on the German and French men, without success. 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! The weather was disgusting humid and hot. Dobas father, a master at building and repairing things from scraps, made his son a bike. sport. The ships captain was hesitant to let the disheveled man back into the ocean alone. The huge group of his supporters keeps growing . The wooden-hulled, paddle-wheel SS Great Western built in 1838 is recognized as the first purpose-built transatlantic steamship, on a scheduled run back and forth from Bristol to New York City. Dobas maternal grandfather, a high-ranking officer in the czarist army, was poisoned in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Aleksander Doba, a Polish traveler, adventurer, and world record holder who in his 60s became the first person to kayak unaided across the Atlantic and set the world record for the longest open-water kayaking expedition, has died while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro: The 74-year-old - once named by National Geographic as its Adventurer of the Year - had been "fulfilling his dream . Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. Today, listen to the story of one man who chose to paddle toward the existential crisis that is life, crossing the Atlantic alone in a kayak. Transatlantic passenger crossings became faster, safer, and more reliable with the advent of steamships in the 19th century. This site is to promote polish paddler Aleksander Doba and his highly respectable . He was unaccustomed to wearing pants. Long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba is at it again. Polish adventurer and kayaker Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic by kayak a few days before turning 71 years old. NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. Doba being helped by the crew of Baltic Light in June 2017, when he had rudder problems during his North Atlantic crossing. I even do oceanic expeditions as a tourist. Still, Gabriela did not want to be Penelope to Dobas Odysseus. Aleksander Doba, famous Polish traveler, died on 8th of February during his expedition to Kilimanjaro. X F. His mother, Eugenia (Ilijna) Doba, was a homemaker. 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. He kept no schedule. The second trip was to raise the bar, Doba says. A documentary about the life of Aleksander Doba entitled Happy Olo was released in 2017. 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. 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. Several books have been written about his adventures, including three written by Doba himself.[21]. Sometimes he took his young sons, Bartek and Czesiek, born in 1979 and 1982. Aleksander Doba (9 September 1946 - 22 February 2021) was a Polish kayaker and mountain climber. And a tourist does not prepare himself too much. He is currently working on two books, Home Works and Cuba. He last shot a smoke sauna in Estonia for the magazine.Correction: March 23, 2018 An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of Piotr Chmielinskis navigation of the Amazon. Chmielinski and others came up with what Doba describes as exotic and expensive methods of rescue. 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. He spent 40 unplanned days and nights wrestling with unfavorable winds and currents that sent him paddling in circles around the notorious Bermuda Triangle. He once became convinced that someone was watching him. Neither Gabriela nor Bartek took him to the airport. An expedition, he told me. 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. Three times, he paddled 200 to 300 miles, only to get pushed back by the winds and currents. Polish adventurer Aleksander "Olek" Doba paddles across the Atlantic by Kayak from Lisbon, Portugal to New Smyrna Beach in Florida:. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. 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.. His body appears to be assembled from parts belonging to people of vastly different ages. Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. You can sit and die. A crisis, in Dobas worldview, is an opportunity for triumph. 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. I am only 67 years young! If you arent willing to suffer, you can do nothing. Aleksander Doba died as he lived, in pursuit of adventure, passing away on the very summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 74. On the morning of Feb. 22, he reached Kilimanjaros summit with two guides. In 1989, he surpassed the record for the most days paddled by a Polish man in a single year. He was assaulted by hailstorms of flying fish. It is simply too dangerous. GitHub export from English Wikipedia. Every two weeks, he would make another loop. 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. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world bu Gabriela traveled to Denmark to study how European Union countries handled problems like unemployment, alcoholism and lonely young mothers. 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. 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. Everyone who cared about Doba opposed his third expedition the cold and stormy North Atlantic, from New Jersey to France. 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. [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. The Greeks got the message and left. In recent years, Mr. Doba enjoyed celebrity status in Poland. Medicine! she said. We watched them in his living room together with Gabriela. His 12,417 kilometer journey began in Lisbon on October 5, 2013 and ended in Florida on April 17, 2014. Through the ocean. I was just paddling down the river, he told the border patrol when he inevitably was caught. He tried to fix it and failed. [11] His feats made him a national hero in Poland. 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. Doba with the writer on the Brda River in central Poland in January. (Doba doesnt speak much English, so we communicated through a translator.) People stopped him on the street to take selfies. Doba paddled naked. He does love Gabriela, however, and he does not want to cause her more pain. It's unique design is compromise between safety during extreme ocean challenge, and feeling that it should be close to spirit of kayaking. The Daily. Actualizado a 24/02/2021 12:40 CET. Aleksander Doba (9 September 1946 - 22 February 2021) was a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans.In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. It was accomplished in a 7-meter sea kayak and set a record for the longest open-water crossing ever undertaken by a kayaker, at roughly 99 days (the previous longest kayak crossing belonged to Peter Bray who traveled from Newfoundland to Ireland in 2001 and took over 76 days, relying on muscle-power only and no sail). These skeletons may have the answer, Scientists are making advancements in birth controlfor men, Blood cleaning? 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. It is basically an avalanche of water. My decision to continue didnt take longer than a few seconds.. 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. Doba wasnt on a schedule. 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. At 15, Doba rode around Poland by himself. . Still unflappable, Doba, who had never cared for the wings to begin with, removed the remainder of the broken pieces and the navigation light attached to them and used an empty plastic jug and duct tape to reattach the lights to the body of the kayak before waving the sloop away for the final 700 miles of his journey. . He took us on long trips, only him and us both, in the middle of nowhere, and we hated that, Bartek recalled. Doba accepted his suggestion that he paddle to Bermuda for a repair. 02/23/21 AT 12:35 PM. She knew I didnt like it.. 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. The combination of a stable kayak and a higher sitting position make the sit-on-top or SOT kayaks a better design for fishing. 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. Still, Doba refused. AD: OLO is 23 feet long and three feet wide and weighs 1,100 pounds, and I used a nine-foot-long kayak paddle. Olo is 300 kilograms empty. Once he got far enough out from the shore, he spent most of the trip naked, deciding it was more comfortable. The trip could have ended five days earlier, but he had promised himself when he left New Jersey that he wouldn't just kayak to Europe, but to the Continent proper. Alexander Doba returns to the Atlantic. 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. When Doba finally said, I will go on the North Atlantic, I said, I will not participate in this, Arminski told me. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. He ate freeze-dried chicken tikka masala and the occasional raw tiny flying fish that landed on his deck. F. Pinterest. The kayak OLO was professionally designed and made in Andrzej Arminski shipyard located in Szczecin, Poland . 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. Gabriela joined us to talk at the dining table, where she had set bowls of peanuts, raisins, chocolates, cookies and cake and French presses of coffee and tea. Dobas stinking foam sleeping pad and other gear from Olo remain, at Gabrielas request, all these months later, on the balcony. The most serious trouble came for Doba when he hit a storm that lasted two days. For 110 days, Mr. Doba paddled eastward on his specially designed fiberglass kayak, Olo. Then I asked the local guides with him, Do you know who this man is? And they said: Yes. [4] He studied mechanical engineering at Poznan University of Technology and worked in a chemical factory most of his life. It was in 2010 that he started seriously planning to cross the Atlantic. Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. He had slept only three hours the night before and had not even had time to double-check all his gear. But after she got the bill for $500, she says, the desire to talk decreased. After more than three months of paddling, a Polish adventure junkie has crossed the Atlantic in a 23 foot custom kayak. I dont know how I ended up here. The soldiers told Doba he had broken so many laws that they didnt know how to charge him. He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. According to multiple Polish media reports . 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. Every three weeks there is a storm with waves that can capsize the kayak. Doba did finally accept help two weeks later. And yet Doba describes his youth as magical, almost fantastical. 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. Phone, bad. He gave the thumbs down. Even in seemingly reasonable conditions, rogue waves can cause havoc. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. *Oficjalny fanpage Aleksandra Doby. He kayaked the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle. [14], On September 3, 2017, Doba completed his third solo transatlantic kayak trip when he kayaked into a port in Le Conquet, France from Barnegat Bay, New Jersey in May 2017. Gabriela, she says, was to be honest, a little pissed that Doba was going again. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. This is a matter of the size and energy of the wave compared to the mass of the kayak. Beyond the boat rolling over, there is an even more catastrophic problem: A breaking wave transfers all the potential energy in the waves height into turbulent, violent kinetic energy. I was just paddling down the river, he explained. He witnessed the formation of storm clouds and the deafening calm that accompanied them. The first time Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba tried to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean in 2007, he didn't get far. In October 2010, Doba voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean by kayak, from Senegal to Brazil and completed his trip in February 2011. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Doba told me when I met him in Poland in January. MARCH 22, 2018. A normal person wants to sit by the fire with their family for Christmas, his son added. 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. Three years later in 2013 he crossed the . Trans Atlantic kayak completed by Aleksander Doba. The weather report was bad, but Chmielinski had arranged for a lot of press, and an entourage of kayakers had come to paddle out with Doba a ways, and he felt he had a duty to them. Aleksander Doba, a Polish adventurer who set out six months ago to cross the Atlantic in a 21-foot kayak, pulled into Port Canaveral in Florida on Thursday night, looking like a castaway. 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. It was his 3rd crossing without a sail. Aleksander Doba, a Polish adventurer who kayaked alone across the Atlantic at the age of 70 while subsisting on his wifes fortifying plum jam after having twice paddled solo across the Atlantic when he was in his 60s died on Feb. 22 on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. His kayak,I rowed varsity crew in highschool and got into kayaking and poling in college. His father, Wincenty, was a mechanic. His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. He did not say this because hes nave. Before they left, Gabriela would make Doba state for the record the condition of the children (Bartek has a small sniffle and is tired but otherwise is well. Aleksander Doba, 68 years old is the first to complete the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic. He didnt particularly want to be rescued, anyway. When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. All rights reserved. The Polish . Aleksander Doba Olo . He told me that he took his father to the airport for his most recent crossing. In truth, my own trip had not been as peaceful as Id hoped. Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. Home. Water trapped in Olos storage lockers short-circuited the electric desalinator. AD: Before the first Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, my wife tried very hard to make me drop such an idea. 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. Doba did anyway. The fabric smelled horrendous and aggravated his skin, so he abandoned clothes. But by katorga, Doba does not mean an activity he does not wish to do. But this specific soup I dont like. That was a shock to his mother-in-law, he said, but a short one. Before he arrived in France, he made a few GoPro videos. He then reached Acara at 17:50 local time (99 days, 6 h, 20 min). UPDATE: The votes are inmore than 521,000 of them, more than ever beforeand we have a winner. How many capsizes can you survive?. How did this mountain lion reach an uninhabited island? Chmielinski also had been coordinating Dobas logistics. I am not German always 9 a.m. paddle, he explained. So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. Aleksander Doba in the Atlantic before arriving in Florida in April 2014. 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. Your . Hed been at sea 110 days, alone, having last touched land that May at New Jerseys Barnegat Bay. During the worst of it, the rope on his sea anchor broke. When he arrived in Brazil he weighed 64kg.