During his voyages he admired the majesty of the sea and relished wonders that he alone was privy to. Doba being helped by the crew of Baltic Light in June 2017, when he had rudder problems during his North Atlantic crossing. It should be noted that he accomplished it using only weekends and normal, 26-day leave. [3], Doba first tried kayaking at age 34 on a trip organised by the company he was working for. It didnt work. So Doba moves toward the crisis, just as he moves toward the suffering. Explore. What if we could clean them out? Doba did anyway. His hands and forearms look 30, straight off a Montana roper. Aleksander Doba: On both routes, I saw floating garbage close to the coasts of Africa and Europe. Heres why each season begins twice. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Doba told me when I met him in Poland in January. Your . 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. So the devil says to the German man: You must jump. At the age of 70, Aleksander Doba became a legend with the kayak. Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week. Still, the trip was perfect. National Geographic . [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. At 67 years old, a Polish kayaker completes the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic in history. Then the devil says to the Frenchman, You must jump. The Frenchman says, What does this mean?. Eventually they found him a ride, and Doba paddled away during a storm. 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. 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. Neither Gabriela nor Bartek took him to the airport. Arminski, the boatbuilder, spent many hours trying to argue Doba out of it. [11] Doba in Lisbon in October 2013, demonstrating how he would live aboard his kayak. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. Doba traveled an average of 30 miles a day, often paddling at night, when the temperatures dropped. Anyone can read what you share. He also snacked on dried fruit and his wifes plum jam, but he ran out of that halfway across the ocean. He kept chasing adventure. 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. kontakt: aleksanderdoba@gmail.com Me, fine, he shouted in English, pointing to himself and giving the thumbs up. Wojciechowska drank a double cappuccino and told me that shed been engaged five times but never married she felt it would be impossible to follow her dreams with a husband. The First Transatlantic Kayak Expedition was to check myself and my kayak. The Polish . Three times. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Today. After I downed it, she laughed. Before the Iron Curtain fell, the Communist Party declared it illegal to kayak on the Baltic Sea, lest anyone defect. 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. "I realized almost immediately that an ordinary kayak can't handle the open . Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. Forty-seven days after it stopped working, the phone came back on. Can we bring a species back from the brink?, Video Story, Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, Copyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. Will he cross the Atlantic again? Dobas stinking foam sleeping pad and other gear from Olo remain, at Gabrielas request, all these months later, on the balcony. He wanted to tough out his original plan. The trip could have easily ended five days earlier, when Doba was just a few hundred feet off the British coast. He used to take his two young sons on expeditions so demanding that his wife Gabriela would check their physical condition . The first time Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba tried to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean in 2007, he didn't get far. [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. Aleksander Doba, 70, completed his transatlantic journey on Sunday after setting off on the epic quest from New Jersey in May. Without the SPOT, nobody would be able to find the kayak if they needed to rescue him. Doba drifted around for days eating freeze-dried goulash and chocolate bars. The idea was to do the crossing unsupported. It was raining. Rather, he said, I was infected with a virus.. [7] But the community raised money for him, and on Oct. 3, 2013, off he went. His father, Wincenty, was a mechanic. Corley, Apr 21, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating. Which travel companies promote harmful wildlife activities? The fabric smelled horrendous and aggravated his skin, so he abandoned clothes. Doba with Mr. Olek, the kayak he uses on rivers locally. He kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean three times, the last time in 2017, when he was 70. You can be made small by life or rage against it. When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. He crossed the ocean three different times in one of these and spent several months completely alone. 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. Polish adventurer Aleksander Doba, who completed three solo kayak trips across the Atlantic, has died at the age of 74 during an attempt to scale the highest peak in Africa, his family said on . 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). Dobas father, a master at building and repairing things from scraps, made his son a bike. One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. Then I saw it: a huge head, sticking out of the ocean, he told Canoe & Kayak magazine in 2014. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. 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. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. 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. 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. This is Gabis Pacific!, Later that afternoon, Bartek, the couples older son, stopped by the apartment with his two elementary-school-age daughters. 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? His fingernails and toenails just about peeled off. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. It looks straight out of a dystopian young-adult novel in which the state is intent on creating little gray men. He had slept only three hours the night before and had not even had time to double-check all his gear. He hungered to paddle across an ocean so vast it seemed infinite. 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. Subscribe. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. When the ship circled back to him again, Mr. Doba shouted a vulgarity in Polish, and they left for good. Doba did not consent. On the morning of Feb. 22, he reached Kilimanjaros summit with two guides. Polish adventurer Aleksander "Olek" Doba paddles across the Atlantic by Kayak from Lisbon, Portugal to New Smyrna Beach in Florida:. It's unique design is compromise between safety during extreme ocean challenge, and feeling that it should be close to spirit of kayaking. I read a post on Men's Journal from 2014 that recounts Doba's paddle across the Atlantic from Portugal to Florida. 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). 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. A National Geographic team has made the first ascent of the remote Mount Michael, looking for a lava lake in the volcanos crater. 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. It was in 2010 that he started seriously planning to cross the Atlantic. His mean speed was 2.26km/h, and he averaged 54km per 24 hours, with a maximum 24hour distance of 126.5km. Aleksander Doba in the Atlantic before arriving in Florida in April 2014. The plan was that if Doba was late, Gabriela would write with a stick in the dirt: I WAS HERE. 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. [2], Doba has also paddled in a kayak with others around the Baltic Sea (in 1999, 80 days, 4227km), from Police to Narvik (in 2000, 101 days, 5369km) and around Lake Baikal (in 2009, 41 days, 2000km). What is wind chill, and how does it affect your body? The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. I sense some . Previous generations had not fared better. He was pummeled again by wind and waves. 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. He had always planned to go on three crossings: South, Mid- and North Atlantic. He waited three days and still had no signal, so in hopes of getting Gabriela or Arminski to look into his phone problems, he pressed the help button on his SPOT device, a piece of gear that has become de rigueur among adventurers, as it can send emergency messages and GPS coordinates when a person is far off the grid. Adventure paddler Aleksander Doba willed his 71-year-old body and 1,600-pound kayak through a 4,000-mile trans-Atlantic journey And he began preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, an expedition that had long been on his bucket list. A real katorga, says Doba, who is Polish katorga being the Polish word for forced labor in Siberia. 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. When does spring start? Still, Doba had no reason to plot a trip across the Atlantic . He studied the water closely. Aleksander Doba. Its good?. 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. The 69-year-old man. 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. Aleksander Doba (9 September 1946 22 February 2021) was a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. How a zoo break-in changed the life of an owl called Flaco, Naked mole rats are fertile until they die, study finds. Mr. Dobas three trans-Atlantic voyages earned him Guinness World Records titles, and in recent years he enjoyed celebrity status in his native Poland. 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. Raspberry vodka! It was also the great luck caused by the determination of many enthusiastic people that the vessel ready to change her course and hurry to provide assistance to 70-years-young Aleksander Doba, who is on his Third Transatlantic Kayak Journey from New Jersey in the USA to Lisbon in Portugal. Doba paddled naked. Doba also brought two sailing harnesses, which resemble climbing harnesses but are worn on the chest instead of the legs; he uses these to attach himself with a carabiner to the boat. So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. Then a woman who noticed me coughing approached with a little glass of thick red liquid that looked like cough syrup. Photo: Wikipedia. Forty-two hours after leaving, they washed up back on the beach. But Mr. Doba had tested the limits of possibility during his two previous Atlantic crossings. A normal person wants to sit by the fire with their family for Christmas, his son added. He did not say this because hes nave. Nobody cares if you cross the Atlantic in a kayak. 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. Sea kayaks are seaworthy small boats with a covered deck and the ability to incorporate a spray deck.They trade off the manoeuvrability of whitewater kayaks for higher cruising speed, cargo capacity, ease of straight-line paddling, and comfort for long journeys. In 2013, when he paddled from Portugal to Florida, a Greek tanker made the mistake of trying to rescue him. sport. (That didnt work.) 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. Gabriela traveled to Denmark to study how European Union countries handled problems like unemployment, alcoholism and lonely young mothers. 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. If a breaking wave hit Olo with no sea anchor, Doba said, I knew I would roll over many times. In 2018, a Polish retiree named Aleksander Doba, at 71, completed his third trans-Atlantic solo crossing, in a 21 kayak he designed. 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. Aleksander Doba died as he lived, in pursuit of adventure, passing away on the very summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 74. The fact that Doba knows this is clear in his eyes. Joakim Eskildsen is a Danish photographer based outside Berlin. He rode through 30-foot waves. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. He put on a clean red-and-white shirt, the colors of the Polish flag, and lay down on the grass. I was the one who would have to pay! he says. In 1989, he surpassed the record for the most days paddled by a Polish man in a single year. A breaking wave can do whatever it wants to a kayak. There was no engineering Olo for this. Id never seen him like that. But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. June 09, 2016. Do you know how fast they go? he said. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world but to mainstream audiences when he kayaked across the Atlantic in . His feats made him a national hero in Poland. For a while, once again, on this second expedition, all was smooth. A week later, three bandits went through my stuff for half an hour. He has kayaked solo across the Atlantic 3 times, most recently in 2017 at the age of 70. . 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. Why wetlands are so critical for life on Earth, Rest in compost? 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. Please upgrade your browser. He arrived at New Smyrna Beach, Florida on April 19, 2014. He was known for his long voyages crossing oceans. Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. 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. He playfully tapped the shells of turtles that swam alongside him. Arminski agreed to build the boat, and in spring of 2010, Olo, as Doba named his kayak after his own nickname, Olek was complete. Hed been at sea 110 days, alone, having last touched land that May at New Jerseys Barnegat Bay. After clearing Barnegat Bay and heading for the horizon, he was soon a floating blip in 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. 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. He kayaked the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle. A Record-Breaking Atlantic Crossing by Kayak. He witnessed the formation of storm clouds and the deafening calm that accompanied them. A sea kayak or touring kayak is a kayak developed for the sport of paddling on open waters of lakes, bays, and the ocean. After he graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering, Doba met Gabriela Stucka, his future wife, on a backpacking trip. I was infected with a virus.. After his salt-water-drenched clothes became too irritating, he navigated the rest of his trip buck naked. Polish adventurer and kayaker Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic by kayak a few days before turning 71 years old. 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. His father built him a bicycle from scrap parts, and when he was 15 he rode it across the country. 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. My flu lingered. As a young man in Communist Poland, he had joined a local kayaking club, and he took to the sport avidly. He has made his own bargain with the human condition. Heres the technology that helped scientists find itand what it may have been used for. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. Nie chce byc malym szarym czlowiekiem, he told me. During the third rescue attempt he yelled a Polish vulgarity. 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. Long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba is at it again. The more you dont believe in Polish people, the more determined we are. No one had ever kayaked across open water for this many miles before his journey. . He told me that he took his father to the airport for his most recent crossing. When he arrived at his destination, he was greeted by one journalist. Recently, just before his 71 st birthday, he sailed single-handed across the Atlantic for the third time in his kayak. We watched them in his living room together with Gabriela. 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. Without the wings, the kayak had greater lateral stability and was less sensitive to wind. [10], After resting there, he initially planned to paddle another 6,000 kilometers north along the shorelines of the Americas to Washington, D.C.[12] However, he eventually decided to transport his transatlantic kayak to Peru instead and embarked on a journey down the Amazon River but after being attacked and robbed twice in Brazil he had to quit. The trip was a fiasco. 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. Here, Fiann Paul from the Ocean Rowing Society International remembers this most accomplished of adventurers. AD: When I was alone on the ocean I had no fear for my life. Everyone who cared about Doba opposed his third expedition the cold and stormy North Atlantic, from New Jersey to France. Aleksander Doba appears to be one such individual. His pension is $700 a month. He relieved himself by leaning off the side or the stern. He lost 14kg in 14 weeks of the journey. My phone exploded with hysterical texts from home. The 70-Year-Old Master Kayaker Doba had only wanted his phone repaired. Doba accepted his suggestion that he paddle to Bermuda for a repair. 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. These animals can sniff it out. Three times, he paddled 200 to 300 miles, only to get pushed back by the winds and currents. Then he sat down and fell asleep.. Doba describes the tedium as a form of dementia: Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of repetitions. 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. The triumph of Aleksander Doba. Along the way, he was thrown from his kayak in a storm. MARCH 22, 2018. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. Transatlantic passenger crossings became faster, safer, and more reliable with the advent of steamships in the 19th century.