Every three weeks there is a storm with waves that can capsize the kayak. He trained by jogging up and down the stairs of a high-rise building with a heavy backpack, and he took long daily hikes. The Pole has announced that he will set off in May on what will be his third - and possibly toughest - Atlantic Crossing. 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. Explore. On Sunday, May 7 2017, Alexander "Olek" Doba, took off from Sandy Hook Bay in New York City in his well-known kayak "OLO". 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. His father, Wincenty, was a mechanic. He then reached Acara at 17:50 local time (99 days, 6 h, 20 min). Medicine! she said. But two months into the voyage, almost dead center in the North Atlantic, Dobas satellite phone stopped working, rendering him unable to communicate for 47 days. This is the only one thing you can do.. 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. 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. 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. A sea kayak or touring kayak is a kayak developed for the sport of paddling on open waters of lakes, bays, and the ocean. 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. Then I saw it: a huge head, sticking out of the ocean, he told Canoe & Kayak magazine in 2014. This was not Dobas first transatlantic crossing in OLO. 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. 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. Sometimes he took his young sons, Bartek and Czesiek, born in 1979 and 1982. He passed out. 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. But Mr. Doba had tested the limits of possibility during his two previous Atlantic crossings. The rope tethering Doba to the kayak came undone. Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. He wanted to tough out his original plan. Doba with Mr. Olek, the kayak he uses on rivers locally. Previous Story: 8.31.17. Previous generations had not fared better. His son Czeslaw said the cause was asphyxia resulting from high-altitude pulmonary edema. His fingernails and toenails just about peeled off. How did he justify it to himself? In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. Along with jars of his wifes plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars and homemade wine. Actualizado a 24/02/2021 12:40 CET. He gives himself control. He explored countless Polish rivers, and he amassed records and firsts. The 70-Year-Old Master Kayaker Corley, Apr 21, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating. Kind, gracious, enthusiastic Poles kept bringing me shots of alcohol, which I tried to wave off. 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. 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 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. 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. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great . He was unaccustomed to wearing pants. He talks about his amazing adventures with passion and energy. (This worked a little, but not entirely.). But by katorga, Doba does not mean an activity he does not wish to do. His skin looks 71. In 2013, when he paddled from Portugal to Florida, a Greek tanker made the mistake of trying to rescue him. Their three sons, Dobas uncles, disappeared. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. Polish long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba was planning to set off to attempt an Atlantic Ocean crossing alone at the age of 69 years. 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.. On it, he has written the names of rivers he has paddled. 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. Doba describes the tedium as a form of dementia: Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of repetitions. No one had ever kayaked across open water for this many miles before his journey. By choosing it, he casts himself in the role of hero, not victim. This man rowed a fucking houseboat across an ocean, absolutely unreal. Doba does not regret this experience. [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. Doba started kayaking in 1980, after he and Gabriela moved to Police, where Doba took his equipment-repair job at the chemical factory and Gabriela was a social worker. Once he was out past the Statue of Liberty, Doba turned on his GPS. He tried to fix it and failed. National Geographic . Phone, bad. He gave the thumbs down. 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. 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 arrived at New Smyrna Beach, Florida on April 19, 2014. For a while the crossing was drama-free. If . Nobody cares if you cross the Atlantic in a kayak. 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. 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!. There were spiders. 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. Someone had forgotten to fund the prepaid credit card that covered the bill. 75 year old adventurer climbed on the highest mountain of Africa and soon after passed away. After breaking off those wings, it took me only a few seconds to adjust and start to enjoy such an unexpected improvement of my kayak, says Doba. The first time Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba tried to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean in 2007, he didn't get far. But this trip felt different. Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. But he had promised himself, when he left New Jersey, that he would kayak not just to Europe but to the Continent proper. The Greeks got the message and left. His kayak,I rowed varsity crew in highschool and got into kayaking and poling in college. This time Dobas trip was far more successful, which is not to say it was pleasant. Shortly after, a huge Greek ship steamed alongside Doba, seeking to rescue him. Replies: 5 Views: 2,045. . Around noon, we pulled onto a riverbank along with the rest of the group to toast sausages and bread over a fire and eat little cookies shaped like croissants. She did not want to spend her life stressed, waiting for his return. [3], Doba first tried kayaking at age 34 on a trip organised by the company he was working for. In truth, my own trip had not been as peaceful as Id hoped. Realizing that Olo might momentarily shatter into pieces, he strapped on a harness and scrambled across the deck to tie on a new anchor before crawling back to his nook. 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 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. 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 . She threatened divorce. Doba wasnt on a schedule. Ocean kayaking is catastrophically monotonous. 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. Aleksander Doba: On both routes, I saw floating garbage close to the coasts of Africa and Europe. He found a piece of grass to end his trip as to him the . During the trip, he struggled against storms; his rudder was damaged and had to be repaired by sailors from a merchant vessel. The whale swam here, and there, all around my kayak. He was greeted by one journalist and the Polish ambassador. One day, a colleague of Dobas said the factorys kayaking club was going on a two-week expedition. 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? *Oficjalny fanpage Aleksandra Doby. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. Before he arrived in France, he made a few GoPro videos. By ELIZABETH WEIL But I dont have a film. The plan was that if Doba was late, Gabriela would write with a stick in the dirt: I WAS HERE. I am not German always 9 a.m. paddle, he explained. At 67 years old, a Polish kayaker completes the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic in history. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. Bigger than the Atlantic! Doba chimed in. 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. AD: Before the first Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, my wife tried very hard to make me drop such an idea. The 68 year-old mechanical engineer from the Polish city of Police, talked to Polska.pl about wind traps, the glistening . Dobas father, a master at building and repairing things from scraps, made his son a bike. Sketch in hand, Doba drove from Police to Szczecin, the regional capital, and approached a yacht-builder named Andrzej Arminski. Me, fine, he shouted in English, pointing to himself and giving the thumbs up. And yet Doba describes his youth as magical, almost fantastical. The trip was a fiasco. His 12,417 kilometer journey began in Lisbon on October 5, 2013 and ended in Florida on April 17, 2014. 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. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great kayaker Alesander Doba on February 22. Aleksander Doba died as he lived, in pursuit of adventure, passing away on the very summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 74. Doba alerted Chmielinski, who alerted Gabriela who didnt really want to know anything about how the trip was going. 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. While it was not the first transatlantic kayak crossing in history, Doba was the first one to travel this way from continent to continent and not island to island. He said it because he has reimagined the concept of crisis, just as he has reimagined the concept of suffering. On the kayak. 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. But Mr. Doba insisted, and he became a blip in the ocean all over again. At 15, Doba rode around Poland by himself. And then, suddenly, the whale went down and disappeared into the ocean.. Navigating OLO was much more difficult than a usual kayak. An elementary school honored him with a statue in his scruffy, bearded likeness. 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. Subscribe. His first crossing was in 2011, from Senegal, West Africa, to Brazil, a 99-day journey. The whole nation was starving. He playfully tapped the shells of turtles that swam alongside him. Her department grew to 100 people from five. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world bu Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Agence France-Presse Getty Images, Mr. Doba once said that his hunger to cross the Atlantic was not really his idea. He drank five cups a day of instant coffee. Through the ocean. So he stayed on the water nearly another week, in the one-meter-wide boat where hed endured towering waves, in the coffinlike cabin where he spent almost four months not sleeping more than three hours at a stretch, where he severely tried his loved ones patience in order to be lonely, naked and afraid. He was pummeled again by wind and waves. 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.) . Then he paddled to the French shore. When people are young, sometimes they are very jealous, she said, and want to keep a piece of their partner for themselves. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. Doba returned to Police to a heros welcome and 14 months later flew to Washington to receive an award from the National Geographic Society as the 2015 Peoples Choice Adventurer of the Year. 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. Aleksander Doba appears to be one such individual. 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. And a tourist does not prepare himself too much. The risk of kayaking the North Atlantic, Arminski believed, was irresponsibly, even amorally high. Transatlantic crossings are passages of passengers and cargo across the Atlantic Ocean between Europe or Africa and the Americas. He was a few . They are falling, falling a catastrophe is about to happen. Gabriela, she says, was to be honest, a little pissed that Doba was going again. His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. Kayak legend Aleksander Doba (74 years) Dies on Kilimanjaro Summit. Aleksander Doba in 2016. 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. A Record-Breaking Atlantic Crossing by Kayak. 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. 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 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. Id never seen him like that. Doba drifted around for days eating freeze-dried goulash and chocolate bars. Aleksander Doba on February 16, 2015 at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw, Poland. The fact that Doba knows this is clear in his eyes. But. One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. All the big muscles in the body are useless. He started in Lisbon, Portugal on October 5th, 2013 and the goal was to arrive in Florida sailing 5,400 nautial miles. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. It was in 2010 that he started seriously planning to cross the Atlantic. 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.