His maternal grandmother was sent to Siberia. They are falling, falling a catastrophe is about to happen. Bigger than the Atlantic! Doba chimed in. Navigating OLO was much more difficult than a usual kayak. If . AD: Before the first Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, my wife tried very hard to make me drop such an idea. During the worst of it, the rope on his sea anchor broke. He talks about his amazing adventures with passion and energy. After clearing Barnegat Bay and heading for the horizon, he was soon a floating blip in the ocean. One day, a colleague of Dobas said the factorys kayaking club was going on a two-week expedition. In mid-September 2013, Doba still did not possess all the gear he wanted to take on his trip. . Those were very, very hard times for both of us. Then shed leave. 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. He did not want to be saved, so he waved the Greeks off. Then Doba sketched out a design for a new boat that could make the trip. [7] People stopped him on the street to take selfies. 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. He wanted to tough out his original plan. Doba rotated through three kinds of freeze-dried porridge for breakfast, four kinds of freeze-dried soup for lunch and an assortment of a dozen freeze-dried entrees. His first crossing was in 2011, from Senegal, West Africa, to Brazil, a 99-day journey. Id been feeling buried, by stuff exactly as predictable as youd imagine for a working mother of two kids. The Olo, Doba's 2010 kayak. That October, he paddled from Senegal to Brazil in 99 days. Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer for the magazine. He then sat down on a rock and "just fell asleep".[19]. He paddled and he paddled and he paddled and he paddled, a real katorga. 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. Then she sat me down at a nearby restaurant, ordered pierogies and borscht and told me a joke. Ocean kayaking is catastrophically monotonous. 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 was raining. But Doba insisted. When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. I am generally physically active, ride a bike, work in my garden, and enjoy walking.. 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. 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. "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. 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. It was his 3rd crossing without a sail. The next time I visited, my mother-in-law did not prepare that soup. During the voyage, Mr. Doba endured a violent two-day storm that nearly swallowed him whole. Doba does not regret this experience. 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. Doba and his wife, Gabriela, at home in Police. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. 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. Absolutely no. The whole nation was starving. Daily News. His body appears to be assembled from parts belonging to people of vastly different ages. The weather was disgusting humid and hot. His 12,417 kilometer journey began in Lisbon on October 5, 2013 and ended in Florida on April 17, 2014. At 15, Doba rode around Poland by himself. He told me that he took his father to the airport for his most recent crossing. The departure for the second trip, from Portugal to Florida, turned out to be very abrupt. In 1989, he spent 108 days on the . 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. kontakt: aleksanderdoba@gmail.com 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 . Aleksander Doba decided to kayak across the Atlantic three times between the ages of 63 and 71 because he didn't want to be "a little gray man". 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. After the transition, as the Poles call their countrys change to a democratic government in the early 1990s, Dobas trips became more extreme. 1,277 talking about this. I was not sure if they would leave me alive. 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. 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. What is wind chill, and how does it affect your body? 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. In recent years, Mr. Doba enjoyed celebrity status in Poland. I did not think I could find myself in something so downing, he texted to Chmielinski, somewhat incomprehensibly, two weeks later. His son Czeslaw said the cause was asphyxia resulting from high-altitude pulmonary edema. Gabriela traveled to Denmark to study how European Union countries handled problems like unemployment, alcoholism and lonely young mothers. AD: I'm not going to repeat paddling the Atlantic Ocean, but paddling something else maybe. Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. In 2018, a Polish retiree named Aleksander Doba, at 71, completed his third trans-Atlantic solo crossing, in a 21 kayak he designed. Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. [1] In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across the Atlantic. Eco-friendly burial alternatives, explained. Aleksander Doba is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba begins his translatlantic kayak adventure from New York to Lisbon on May 29, 2016 in New York. [18], Doba died while climbing Kilimanjaro on February 22, 2021. Aleksander Doba appears to be one such individual. This does not feel good.. Replies: 5 Views: 2,045. . Aleksander Doba, 68 years old is the first to complete the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic. His hands and forearms look 30, straight off a Montana roper. Doba started talking about his second trans-Atlantic trip a few days after he returned from the first. Bats and agaves make tequila possibleand theyre both at risk, This empress was the most dangerous woman in Rome. Doba returned to his cabin somewhat shocked to be alive. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. 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. My attempt to get out of this terrible conflict was a signal strike. Doba then turned off all his communications, including his SPOT device, which uploaded his coordinates every 10 minutes. MARCH 22, 2018. Doba with Olo, the kayak he used to cross the North Atlantic in 2017. Arminski agreed to build the boat, and in spring of 2010, Olo, as Doba named his kayak after his own nickname, Olek was complete. After more than three months of paddling, a Polish adventure junkie has crossed the Atlantic in a 23 foot custom kayak. In addition to Czeslaw, Mr. Doba is survived by his wife; another son, Bartek; a sister, Wanda Kedzia; and three grandchildren. Doba did anyway. I was not in a great state. 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. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. How a zoo break-in changed the life of an owl called Flaco, Naked mole rats are fertile until they die, study finds. The air that day hovered around 40 degrees about 4 degrees Celsius. He started in Lisbon, Portugal on October 5th, 2013 and the goal was to arrive in Florida sailing 5,400 nautial miles. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic . (Very fine, he said. One of the last people to see Mr. Doba alive was a Polish climber named Boguslaw Wawrzyniak, who was also summiting Kilimanjaro that day. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. He did not say this because hes nave. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired engineer with a thick white beard and a piercing gaze, was a popular figure in Poland. Me, fine, he shouted in English, pointing to himself and giving the thumbs up. 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. She threatened divorce. Many things can go wrong while at sea, and if something does go wrong, help can be . Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world bu 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. Hed been at sea 110 days, alone, having last touched land that May at New Jerseys Barnegat Bay. Aleksander Doba. 2 November 2015. Doba being helped by the crew of Baltic Light in June 2017, when he had rudder problems during his North Atlantic crossing. When does spring start? He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Please be respectful of copyright. Home. The fabric smelled horrendous and aggravated his skin, so he abandoned clothes. He took us on long trips, only him and us both, in the middle of nowhere, and we hated that, Bartek recalled. Medicine! she said. One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. 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. Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week. He is one of two people in the world to kayak across the Atlantic without a sail. Then I saw it: a huge head, sticking out of the ocean, he told Canoe & Kayak magazine in 2014. He kept no schedule. [9][4] Doba's journey started at 15:30 Polish time[10] on 26 October 2010 in Dakar, Senegal, and ended when he reached Brazil, touching dry land at 10:12 local time for the first time in 98 days, 23 hours, and 42 min. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. He gives himself control. Doba tried to heat the pin with his camping stove and smash it straight. Doba with the writer on the Brda River in central Poland in January. Aleksander Doba, famous Polish traveler, died on 8th of February during his expedition to Kilimanjaro. Doba signed up for the factory kayaking trip and went again the following year. He lost 14kg in 14 weeks of the journey. Brent Stirton/Getty Images, for The New York Times, Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post. Three times. 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. [15][16] He has also jumped 14 times with parachute, piloted gliders for a total of 250 hours, and practiced cycling. This was not Dobas first transatlantic crossing in OLO. No retired man in Poland can afford to do these things, Doba explained. 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. Rather, he said, I was infected with a virus.. His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. Nonetheless, Gabriela was not prepared for Dobas first trans-Atlantic expedition. So the devil says to the German man: You must jump. 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. (Doba doesnt speak much English, so we communicated through a translator.) After taking in the view, he sat on a rock to rest. Three years later in 2013 he crossed the . First, five bandits robbed me for three hours. In the early 1970s, Mr. Doba graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. 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. He used to take his two young sons on expeditions so demanding that his wife Gabriela would check their physical condition . His father built him a bicycle from scrap parts, and when he was 15 he rode it across the country. He trained by jogging up and down the stairs of a high-rise building with a heavy backpack, and he took long daily hikes. Raspberry vodka! An elementary school honored him with a statue in his scruffy, bearded likeness. A sea kayak or touring kayak is a kayak developed for the sport of paddling on open waters of lakes, bays, and the ocean. When Doba finally said, I will go on the North Atlantic, I said, I will not participate in this, Arminski told me. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. Aleksander Doba in 2016. The kayak OLO was professionally designed and made in Andrzej Arminski shipyard located in Szczecin, Poland . Three days in, Doba received his first storm warning. 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.) 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. His pension is $700 a month. 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. Previous generations had not fared better. 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 two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. When the ship circled back to him again, Mr. Doba shouted a vulgarity in Polish, and they left for good.