Doba started talking about his second trans-Atlantic trip a few days after he returned from the first. Then Doba sketched out a design for a new boat that could make the trip. His pension is $700 a month. Chmielinski and others came up with what Doba describes as exotic and expensive methods of rescue. A documentary about the life of Aleksander Doba entitled Happy Olo was released in 2017. Doba did finally accept help two weeks later. Doba, Aleksander, 1946- - Library of Congress He held a marine yacht skipper certificate. He is one of two people in the world to kayak across the Atlantic without a sail. What if we could clean them out? 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. It was raining. (He ate all the meat options first.) So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. Doba with Olo, the kayak he used to cross the North Atlantic in 2017. A week later, three bandits went through my stuff for half an hour. 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. Corley, Apr 21, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating. Log In Once logged in, you can add biography in the database. However, in general, from my very low point of observation, the ocean looked clean. 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. Aboard Baltic Light, he ate a hot meal and took a bunch of selfies with the Filipino crew. Aleksander Doba on February 16, 2015 at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw, Poland. Juan Villarino waits for a ride in the Namibian desert. It felt good. When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. Doba tried to sleep during the day but couldnt, so he tried to paddle during the day and nearly got sunstroke. I hope they will learn not to be afraid to dream, turn dreams into plans, and bring plans to reality. The departure for the second trip, from Portugal to Florida, turned out to be very abrupt. I consider myself to be a tourist, he explains. Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer for the magazine. Before the Iron Curtain fell, the Communist Party declared it illegal to kayak on the Baltic Sea, lest anyone defect. In 2018, a Polish retiree named Aleksander Doba, at 71, completed his third trans-Atlantic solo crossing, in a 21 kayak he designed. . 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. 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. 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. 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 next time I visited, my mother-in-law did not prepare that soup. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. [4] He studied mechanical engineering at Poznan University of Technology and worked in a chemical factory most of his life. Aleksander Doba was the most accomplished trans-oceanic solo kayaker in the world, who continued setting records into his seventies. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. Daily News. 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. Arminski agreed to build the boat, and in spring of 2010, Olo, as Doba named his kayak after his own nickname, Olek was complete. Original resource from explorersweb.comThe 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. He tried to drill holes in the rudder and attach the rudder to the stern with plastic ties. Event producers asked him to just walk onstage and say, in English, Thank you very much. Doba, who wore jeans to the June ceremony, walked onstage and said, Polacy nie gesi i swoj jezyk maja. Polish people are not geese and have their own language. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. Aleksander Doba to Kayak Across the Atlantic Ocean | the Adventure Blog Aleksander Doba (born 9 September 1946) is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. Replies: 5 Views: 2,045. . During the expedition storms threw him off course and he had to sail 1,300 additional nautical miles to . During a storm, the water below the oceans surface stays relatively still; what moves radically are the waves. [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. Many things can go wrong while at sea, and if something does go wrong, help can be . GitHub export from English Wikipedia. ) so that she could compare it with the condition of her children upon their return. The Olo, Doba's 2010 kayak. Phone, bad. He gave the thumbs down. What most of us experience as suffering he repurposes as contrarian self-determination, and that gives him an existential thrill. The fact that Doba knows this is clear in his eyes. Aleksander Doba - Facebook Transatlantic Kayak Crossing: Kayak - Blogger They offered to throw him ropes. During the third rescue attempt he yelled a Polish vulgarity. June 09, 2016. After another storm, Olos rudder was seriously damaged, so he reluctantly contacted his team via satellite phone seeking help. Without the SPOT, nobody would be able to find the kayak if they needed to rescue him. Aleksander Doba kayaked the Atlantic | Louis-Philippe Loncke Doba does not regret this experience. Several books have been written about his adventures, including three written by Doba himself.[21]. He tried to fix it and failed. His eyes blew up with conjunctivitis. The Daily. But I dont have a film. He was pummeled again by wind and waves. Doba didnt begin kayaking until the age of 34 and didnt train physically for the journey. I did it with no stuntman, Doba told me proudly. 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. Sadly, he passed away this week while climbing Kilimanjaro. And he began preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, an expedition that had long been on his bucket list. Actualizado a 24/02/2021 12:40 CET. People stopped him on the street to take selfies. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. 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. When the ship circled back to him again, Mr. Doba shouted a vulgarity in Polish, and they left for good. Transatlantic Crossing - Encyclopedia Information Adventurer of 2015 ! But this specific soup I dont like. That was a shock to his mother-in-law, he said, but a short one. 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. He has made his own bargain with the human condition. [15][16] He has also jumped 14 times with parachute, piloted gliders for a total of 250 hours, and practiced cycling. During the voyage, Mr. Doba endured a violent two-day storm that nearly swallowed him whole. Touch device users, explore by touch or . He used to take his two young sons on expeditions so demanding that his wife Gabriela would check their physical condition . 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. Why This 70-Year-Old Kayaked Across the Atlantic for the Third Time But Doba insisted. Even here at home, Dobas physicality is sui generis. 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. Then I saw it: a huge head, sticking out of the ocean, he told Canoe & Kayak magazine in 2014. Dne 22. nora 2021 zemel ve vku 74 let pi vstupu na Kilimandro polsk dobrodruh Aleksander Olek" Doba, kter byl znm hlavn svmi peplavbami Atlantskho ocenu. Nie chce byc malym szarym czlowiekiem, he told me. This does not feel good.. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great kayaker Alesander Doba on February 22. His hair and beard appear to be taken from a Michelangelo painting of God. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Doba had promised himself he would be tougher than all that. [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. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. Dobas apartment building is a five-story cube of blank concrete, with blank concrete stairwells. [1] In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across the Atlantic. But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. Their three sons, Dobas uncles, disappeared. 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. As he braced for his life, the rope tethering his sea anchor (the only thing keeping his kayak stable) broke off. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Doba told me when I met him in Poland in January. It is basically an avalanche of water. I was infected with a virus.. [11] He did not say this because hes nave. [4][17] With his wife Gabriela he had two sons: Bartomiej and Czesaw. 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. He witnessed the formation of storm clouds and the deafening calm that accompanied them. He did explain to her how to boil water, which to this day she finds ridiculous. Doba declined the ropes the crew offered to throw him. Doba began planning it, of course, a few days after he returned from Florida. He has no interest in dying in his bed. In 2013, when he paddled from Portugal to Florida, a Greek tanker made the mistake of trying to rescue him. 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. And then, suddenly, the whale went down and disappeared into the ocean.. Then he paddled to the French shore. Every three weeks there is a storm with waves that can capsize the kayak. Hed been at sea 110 days, alone, having last touched land that May at New Jerseys Barnegat Bay. Nonetheless, Gabriela was not prepared for Dobas first trans-Atlantic expedition. In October 2010, Doba voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean by kayak, from Senegal to Brazil and completed his trip in February 2011. After more than three months of paddling, a Polish adventure junkie has crossed the Atlantic in a 23 foot custom kayak. Sometimes he took his young sons, Bartek and Czesiek, born in 1979 and 1982. The devil, a German man, a Frenchman and a Polish man are all in a hot-air balloon, Wojciechowska said. Doba also called his wife, twice. When he arrived in Brazil he weighed 64kg. Go, Olek, Go! 67-Year-Old Transatlantic Kayaker 300 Miles - Adventure With a long grey beard, a big smile on the face and the looks of a pensioner on holiday, Aleksander Doba didn . . Do you know how fast they go? he said. He wasnt a man who necessarily looked forward to spending Christmas with the family, his son Czeslaw said. He grew up ice skating on ponds and skiing through forests. The most serious trouble came for Doba when he hit a storm that lasted two days. Aleksander Doba died as he lived, in pursuit of adventure, passing away on the very summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 74. Her department grew to 100 people from five. 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 texted via satellite phone with his family and Arminski, the boat builder, who once again served as trip navigator, sending wind and weather reports. Legendary Kayaker Aleksander Doba Dies on Kilimanjaro Summit 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. 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. Among Dobas bigger regrets in life are the times when he has succumbed, when he has perceived and reacted to suffering in conventional ways for instance, the night in April 1989 when he built a fire in order to make tea and dry his clothes while paddling on the Vistula River near the city of Plock, in central Poland. Mr Doba, from Poland, came ashore at Le Conquet, Brittany, which is . He is a family man, whose positive attitude to life is contagious. A freighter picked him up, and its Filipino crew repaired the rudder. X He kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean three times, the last time in 2017, when he was 70. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic . A Record-Breaking Atlantic Crossing by Kayak. Aleksander Doba is a Polish traveler and explorer. But this voyage was too dangerous, she told me, to keep her head where she liked it to be, stuck in the sand. He kept chasing adventure. The trip was a fiasco. 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. Why wetlands are so critical for life on Earth, Rest in compost? Suffering tends to do more for the flagellant than it does for the flagellants loved ones. Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. 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. UPDATE: 70-Year-Old completes transatlantic journey in 23-foot kayak Along the way, he was thrown from his kayak in a storm. I was not in a great state. These animals can sniff it out. 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. When he arrived at his destination, he was greeted by one journalist. Will he cross the Atlantic again? The weather was disgusting humid and hot. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility. Me, fine, he shouted in English, pointing to himself and giving the thumbs up. I paddle when I would like. His skin broke out in salt-induced rashes, including blisters in his armpits and groin. 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. Arminski, the boatbuilder, spent many hours trying to argue Doba out of it. Pensioner, 70, paddles across Atlantic Ocean in kayak for the third Then she sat me down at a nearby restaurant, ordered pierogies and borscht and told me a joke. Doba traveled an average of 30 miles a day, often paddling at night, when the temperatures dropped. A breaking wave can do whatever it wants to a kayak. There was no engineering Olo for this. 2013Aleksander Doba67. At the age of 70, Aleksander Doba became a legend with the kayak. He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. She felt bad about it, she said, and she felt judged, but here we were, werent we? Along with jars of his wifes plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars and homemade wine. Doba was blown to the beach and called the trip off. In 1989, he surpassed the record for the most days paddled by a Polish man in a single year. His mean speed was 2.26km/h, and he averaged 54km per 24 hours, with a maximum 24hour distance of 126.5km. [4] He quickly started going on kayaking expeditions regularly. Transatlantic crossings Shortly after, a huge Greek ship steamed alongside Doba, seeking to rescue him. 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. Then I asked the local guides with him, Do you know who this man is? And they said: Yes. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. When Mr. Doba encountered border patrol soldiers, they told him that he was in serious breach of the law. 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. 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 whale swam here, and there, all around my kayak. Before he arrived in France, he made a few GoPro videos. During the worst of it, the rope on his sea anchor broke. The Pole has announced that he will set off in May on what will be his third - and possibly toughest - Atlantic Crossing. Aleksander Doba Wikipedia Republished // WIKI 2 Once Poland became a democracy, social structures and attitudes changed. I am only 67 years young! This story is one of four extraordinary journeys published in the magazine's Voyages issue.Read the rest here:
Reviews, News & Stories Paddling Buyer's Guide Paddling Trip Guide. 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. 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. Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. He kept no schedule. The Greeks got the message and left. 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". Sean Dudley. The huge group of his supporters keeps growing . [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. The rope tethering Doba to the kayak came undone. I am not German always 9 a.m. paddle, he explained. There were small rivers, and we were squeezing through the bushes., Freed from the ballast of his sons, Doba started setting goals for himself: surpass the record of the greatest number of days paddled by a Polish man in a single year (108); kayak the longest possible route in Poland (1,189 kilometers). Id been feeling buried, by stuff exactly as predictable as youd imagine for a working mother of two kids. 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. I wished him luck in reaching the summit, Mr. Wawrzyniak said in a phone interview. I did not see oil slicks and there were not large amounts of trash, just single pieces of rubbish. Neither Gabriela nor Bartek took him to the airport. AD: When I packed things carefully and ate some food, I could lie down on my back. When people are young, sometimes they are very jealous, she said, and want to keep a piece of their partner for themselves. 1,277 talking about this. Explore. 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. Polish long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba was planning to set off to attempt an Atlantic Ocean crossing alone at the age of 69 years. The First Transatlantic Kayak Expedition was to check myself and my kayak. Dedham Kayak Company | Boat Design Net But he had promised himself, when he left New Jersey, that he would kayak not just to Europe but to the Continent proper. 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. She did not want to spend her life stressed, waiting for his return. I am Polish. Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic by kayak - YouTube | Kayaking Physically, Doba did not seem to experience any difficulty beyond some uncomfortable and persistent skin rashes caused by prolonged exposure to saltwater. Trans Atlantic kayak completed by Aleksander Doba - Boat Design Net Doba accepted his suggestion that he paddle to Bermuda for a repair. 75 year old adventurer climbed on the highest mountain of Africa and soon after passed away. 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. During his voyages he admired the majesty of the sea and relished wonders that he alone was privy to. His chest looks 50. Remembering Aleksander Doba, Who Kayaked Across Atlantic - OutdoorMaster Nobody cares if you cross the Atlantic in a kayak. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. Its 20-meter-long tail was wagging. 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. Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. His feats made him a national hero in Poland. Not according to biology or history. Kayaking is an absurd form of long-distance ocean travel. Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week. Gabriela traveled to Denmark to study how European Union countries handled problems like unemployment, alcoholism and lonely young mothers. An expedition, he told me. It looks straight out of a dystopian young-adult novel in which the state is intent on creating little gray men. An early escapade involved kayaking on the Baltic Sea at a time when the Communist Party, to discourage defectors, had declared it illegal. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great . In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. Then a woman who noticed me coughing approached with a little glass of thick red liquid that looked like cough syrup. On the kayak. Four days later, after capsizing repeatedly, Doba finally cleared the Sandy Hook peninsula and left lower New York Bay. At age 64, after 42 years of marriage, she still adores Doba, and her acceptance of him is absolute easier than it used to be, in fact. Doba describes the tedium as a form of dementia: Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of repetitions. Doba signed up for the factory kayaking trip and went again the following year. Doba was ready, Chmielinski suspected, to just drift off into the eternal vastness and go down with his ship. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post. The first time I visited my future mother-in-law, she served ducks blood soup. When he saw shooting stars at night, he made wishes that, he said, later came true. 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. He kayaked the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle. In addition to Czeslaw, Mr. Doba is survived by his wife; another son, Bartek; a sister, Wanda Kedzia; and three grandchildren. But the community raised money for him, and on Oct. 3, 2013, off he went. Aleksander doba - Compass magazine Kayak legend Aleksander Doba (74 years) Dies on Kilimanjaro Summit. National Geographic . Subscribe. He hungered to paddle across an ocean so vast it seemed infinite. My flu lingered. In both cases, they held me at gunpoint with rifles, pistols, and machetes. Aleksander Doba, 70, completed his transatlantic journey on Sunday after setting off on the epic quest from New Jersey in May. Previous Story: 8.31.17. With this design the paddler sits up off the water as well. 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. 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. Ocean kayaking is catastrophically monotonous. He preferred to be dropped off on a cold river in the middle of the snow.. Doba paddled naked.