The plan was that if Doba was late, Gabriela would write with a stick in the dirt: I WAS HERE. AD: I'm not going to repeat paddling the Atlantic Ocean, but paddling something else maybe. 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 . Sean Dudley. The Polish adventurer was world-famous for his oceanic kayak voyages. Transatlantic crossings are passages of passengers and cargo across the Atlantic Ocean between Europe or Africa and the Americas. 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. Doba has a deep, almost performance-art-like sense of this. Navigating OLO was much more difficult than a usual kayak. A normal person wants to sit by the fire with their family for Christmas, his son added. Aleksander Doba is no stranger to long ocean crossings. Long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba is at it again. Doba paddled naked. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. Those were very, very hard times for both of us. Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. 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. Neither Gabriela nor Bartek took him to the airport. Id been feeling buried, by stuff exactly as predictable as youd imagine for a working mother of two kids. Me, fine, he shouted in English, pointing to himself and giving the thumbs up. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Mr. Doba told The New York Times Magazine in 2018. 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. [3], Doba first tried kayaking at age 34 on a trip organised by the company he was working for. (This worked a little, but not entirely.). Its 20-meter-long tail was wagging. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. After he graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering, Doba met Gabriela Stucka, his future wife, on a backpacking trip. Photo: Wikipedia. His pension is $700 a month. He then reached Acara at 17:50 local time (99 days, 6 h, 20 min). But Mr. Doba insisted, and he became a blip in the ocean all over again. But Mr. Doba hungered to cross an ocean so vast that it seemed infinite, and he began plotting to kayak the Atlantic. He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. Doba does not regret this experience. On the way to my grandmothers house for the holidays, he wanted to be dropped off on a river and asked us to pick him up on the way back. Doba had only wanted his phone repaired. The voyage took him 196 days to complete, and he paddled 6,300 miles. ' laughs intrepid kayaker Aleksander Doba. Every time he closed his eyes, Doba told me, I dreamed I was paddling in the winter in Poland. He lost 45 pounds. (Honestly, you dont need the details.) He lost 14kg in 14 weeks of the journey. He passed out. Doba in Lisbon in October 2013, demonstrating how he would live aboard his kayak. Heres the technology that helped scientists find itand what it may have been used for. 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. There were spiders. During the worst of it, the rope on his sea anchor broke. During a storm, the water below the oceans surface stays relatively still; what moves radically are the waves. Doba accepted his suggestion that he paddle to Bermuda for a repair. He found a piece of grass to end his trip as to him the . AD: No, although 40 nights of strenuous effort to break out of the trap of unfavorable winds in the Bermuda Triangle drained me very much. 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. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. 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). During the third rescue attempt he yelled a Polish vulgarity. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic . In October 2010, Doba voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean by kayak, from Senegal to Brazil and completed his trip in February 2011. F. 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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Touch device users, explore by touch or . Aleksander Doba, honorary citizen of the city, is dead", "Why He Kayaked Across the Atlantic at 70 (for the Third Time)", "Aleksander Doba tym razem wituje z rodzin", "Aleksander Doba, Adventurers of the Year 2014/2015 - National Geographic", "Arsoba Travel:: sztuka podrowania - Kajakiem DOOKOA BAJKAU w pojedynk:: lato 2009", "Aleksander Doba - Samotnie Kajakiem Przez Atlantyk", "Wspomnienie Aleksandra Doby. 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.. He kayaked the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle. Id never seen him like that. Still, Doba had no reason to plot a trip across the Atlantic . He was pummeled again by wind and waves. 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 risk of kayaking the North Atlantic, Arminski believed, was irresponsibly, even amorally high. AD: When I was alone on the ocean I had no fear for my life. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. With this design the paddler sits up off the water as well. Then the AA batteries for his SPOT personal tracking device failed, and the retired engineer had to rig a new, delicate connection using AAAs. One of the last people to see Mr. Doba alive was a Polish climber named Boguslaw Wawrzyniak, who was also summiting Kilimanjaro that day. He has kayaked solo across the Atlantic 3 times, most recently in 2017 at the age of 70. . Arminski, the boatbuilder, spent many hours trying to argue Doba out of it. After a while, the boys began to mutiny. AD: Before the first Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, my wife tried very hard to make me drop such an idea. 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". He wanted to tough out his original plan. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. 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 . But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. Doba wasnt on a schedule. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. 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. 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) Then the devil says to the Frenchman, You must jump. The Frenchman says, What does this mean?. But this trip felt different. Still, Doba refused. One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. With a long grey beard, a big smile on the face and the looks of a pensioner on holiday, Aleksander Doba didn . Every three weeks there is a storm with waves that can capsize the kayak. Nobody cares if you cross the Atlantic in a kayak. AD: When I packed things carefully and ate some food, I could lie down on my back. The ships captain was hesitant to let the disheveled man back into the ocean alone. Aleksander Doba in 2016. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. MARCH 22, 2018. This is Gabis Pacific!, Later that afternoon, Bartek, the couples older son, stopped by the apartment with his two elementary-school-age daughters. When the ship circled back to him again, Mr. Doba shouted a vulgarity in Polish, and they left for good. The primary challenge is not physical. After taking in the view, he sat on a rock to rest. The World's Greatest Hitchhiker But after she got the bill for $500, she says, the desire to talk decreased. On Sunday, May 7 2017, Alexander "Olek" Doba, took off from Sandy Hook Bay in New York City in his well-known kayak "OLO". Without the wings, the kayak had greater lateral stability and was less sensitive to wind. I am Polish. First, five bandits robbed me for three hours. Sketch in hand, Doba drove from Police to Szczecin, the regional capital, and approached a yacht-builder named Andrzej Arminski. The departure for the second trip, from Portugal to Florida, turned out to be very abrupt. He did not want to be saved, so he waved the Greeks off. His eyes blew up with conjunctivitis. Through the ocean. A mans world? Meet the man who solo kayaked the Atlantic Ocean - three times. The 70-Year-Old Master Kayaker 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. During his voyages he admired the majesty of the sea and relished wonders that he alone was privy to. F. Pinterest. But this specific soup I dont like. That was a shock to his mother-in-law, he said, but a short one. He did not say this because hes nave. 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. The devil, a German man, a Frenchman and a Polish man are all in a hot-air balloon, Wojciechowska said. Create Biography . I was infected with a virus.. During the voyage, Mr. Doba endured a violent two-day storm that nearly swallowed him whole. Absolutely no. By ELIZABETH WEIL Even here at home, Dobas physicality is sui generis. Bigger than the Atlantic! Doba chimed in. The 'extreme cruelty' around the global trade in frog legs, What does cancer smell like? [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. Joakim Eskildsen is a Danish photographer based outside Berlin. He relieved himself by leaning off the side or the stern. Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. After another storm, Olos rudder was seriously damaged, so he reluctantly contacted his team via satellite phone seeking help. But this voyage was too dangerous, she told me, to keep her head where she liked it to be, stuck in the sand. Doba did not consent. When he encountered Mr. Doba at 18,700 feet, he was excited to encounter one of his homelands heroes, and he took a selfie with him on the mountain. But storms and equipment failure threw Doba off course, tacking an additional 1,300 miles and two months onto a journey that already would have broken the record for the longest ever solo kayaking voyage. Doba describes the tedium as a form of dementia: Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of repetitions. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. Suffering tends to do more for the flagellant than it does for the flagellants loved ones. 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. In 2013, when he paddled from Portugal to Florida, a Greek tanker made the mistake of trying to rescue him. Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. Everyone who cared about Doba opposed his third expedition the cold and stormy North Atlantic, from New Jersey to France. Its good?. Even in seemingly reasonable conditions, rogue waves can cause havoc. Your . Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. After the transition, as the Poles call their countrys change to a democratic government in the early 1990s, Dobas trips became more extreme. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean. These involved such things as catamarans sailing in from the Bahamas and helicopters dropping rudder-repair gift packages out of the sky. The fact that Doba knows this is clear in his eyes. (This did work, in that Doba managed to drill the holes, but he couldnt steer.) Ninety-nine days after leaving Senegal, Doba arrived in Brazil. Corley, Apr 21, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating. The 68 year-old mechanical engineer from the Polish city of Police, talked to Polska.pl about wind traps, the glistening . His kayak,I rowed varsity crew in highschool and got into kayaking and poling in college. Please upgrade your browser. Along the way, he was thrown from his kayak in a storm. Many things can go wrong while at sea, and if something does go wrong, help can be . When he saw shooting stars at night, he made wishes that, he said, later came true. Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. He went on to win the gold medal at the Open Academic Polish Championships in Whitewater Kayaking in 2003 at age 57 and defended the title the next year. But the community raised money for him, and on Oct. 3, 2013, off he went. So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. After I downed it, she laughed. Can we bring a species back from the brink? 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. 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. Transatlantic passenger crossings became faster, safer, and more reliable with the advent of steamships in the 19th century. He said it because he has reimagined the concept of crisis, just as he has reimagined the concept of suffering. This was not Dobas first transatlantic crossing in OLO. After clearing Barnegat Bay and heading for the horizon, he was soon a floating blip in the ocean. His chest looks 50. During the trip, he struggled against storms; his rudder was damaged and had to be repaired by sailors from a merchant vessel. Doba also called his wife, twice. He crossed the ocean three different times in one of these and spent several months completely alone. He kept chasing adventure. He woke up on shore to the sound of screaming his own. But then Doba turned his SPOT and his phone back on. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired . He took us on long trips, only him and us both, in the middle of nowhere, and we hated that, Bartek recalled. 2013Aleksander Doba67. Gabriela did not believe he would. For a while, once again, on this second expedition, all was smooth. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. Unauthorized use is prohibited. [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. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility, he told The Times. 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 trip was a fiasco. He told me that he took his father to the airport for his most recent crossing. If I survive., One unseasonably balmy January morning, Doba, dressed in baggy Gore-Tex pants and rain boots, handed me a blue plastic paddle, waved me into the front of a red double kayak, took out his hearing aids and declared, happily, shoving us off, Now I am in the silent zone. We had gone to a river-veined lowland of central Poland for the 53rd annual International Winter Kayaking Congregation, an event that sounds grand but was really just 60 Polish people, at or past middle age, spending a weekend in January together kayaking, drinking and hanging out at a lodge.