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He was unaccustomed to wearing pants. He died like an adventurer after . In video footage of the hour before he left, Doba looks wrecked exhausted and on the verge of tears. By ELIZABETH WEIL Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Agence France-Presse Getty Images, Mr. Doba once said that his hunger to cross the Atlantic was not really his idea. On the warmer part of the Atlantic Ocean, flying fish were a big, unexpected attraction. 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. In 1989, he spent 108 days on the . ) so that she could compare it with the condition of her children upon their return. As he braced for his life, the rope tethering his sea anchor (the only thing keeping his kayak stable) broke off. Doba did finally accept help two weeks later. He drank five cups a day of instant coffee. But after she got the bill for $500, she says, the desire to talk decreased. I did not think I could find myself in something so downing, he texted to Chmielinski, somewhat incomprehensibly, two weeks later. It started with a small diatribe on the tyranny of politeness that dictates a houseguest must always say he likes everything his host serves him and the problem that results: Youre fed food you dont like again and again. Aleksander Doba kayaked the Atlantic EN: I drove from Brussels to Le Conquet (Brest) in France to greet Polish adventurer Alex Doba who finished his 3rd kayak transatlantic in exactly 110 days (16 May - 3 Sept). His mean speed was 2.26km/h, and he averaged 54km per 24 hours, with a maximum 24hour distance of 126.5km. Mr Doba, from Poland, came ashore at Le Conquet, Brittany, which is . The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. Photo: Wikipedia. Recently, just before his 71 st birthday, he sailed single-handed across the Atlantic for the third time in his kayak. 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. 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. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility. After the transition, as the Poles call their countrys change to a democratic government in the early 1990s, Dobas trips became more extreme. The whole nation was starving. 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. The fabric smelled horrendous and aggravated his skin, so he abandoned clothes. Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic solo by the longest route, unaided and without a sail. [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. Id never seen him like that. If . The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. Then she sat me down at a nearby restaurant, ordered pierogies and borscht and told me a joke. In photos from the ends of his trips, he looks ecstatic and feral, in the best possible sense, intrinsically wild and free. (This worked a little, but not entirely.). I was not in a great state. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. When Mr. Doba encountered border patrol soldiers, they told him that he was in serious breach of the law. But I dont have a film. Unloading OLO from the sloop that returned Doba back to the exact spot where he had been forced off course, the kayak's so-called wings, designed to act as roll bars to keep the vessel upright, broke. Aleksander Ludwik Doba was born on Sept. 9, 1946, in Swarzedz, Poland. Then I asked the local guides with him, Do you know who this man is? And they said: Yes. (That didnt work.) Chmielinski interpreted this communication blackout as a sign that Doba was deeply despairing, perhaps because he was alone again after being with the crew on Baltic Light, perhaps because, now that he had accepted help, he worried that he would not earn a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for kayaking solo from continent to continent unsupported. This is Gabis Pacific!, Later that afternoon, Bartek, the couples older son, stopped by the apartment with his two elementary-school-age daughters. But Doba insisted. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world bu In October 2010, Doba voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean by kayak, from Senegal to Brazil and completed his trip in February 2011. Polish adventurer and kayaker Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic by kayak a few days before turning 71 years old. There were spiders. And then, suddenly, the whale went down and disappeared into the ocean.. 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. 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. The 'extreme cruelty' around the global trade in frog legs, What does cancer smell like? By choosing it, he casts himself in the role of hero, not victim. "Video: People's Choice Adventurer of the Year Aleksander Doba", "Aleksander Doba Completes His Third Atlantic Crossing in a Kayak", "Police. But so what? He did not say this because hes nave. He crossed the ocean three different times in one of these and spent several months completely alone. As a young man in Communist Poland, he had joined a local kayaking club, and he took to the sport avidly. In recent years, Mr. Doba enjoyed celebrity status in Poland. He arrived in Tanzania last month. It was his 3rd crossing without a sail. However, in Brazil, while running the Amazon in my kayak in 2011, I survived two bouts of rogues with firearms and machetes. Every three weeks there is a storm with waves that can capsize the kayak. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. 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. 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. 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. Absolutely no. From what we gather, he was euphoric to reach the summit. Four days later, after capsizing repeatedly, Doba finally cleared the Sandy Hook peninsula and left lower New York Bay. I was just paddling down the river, he told the border patrol when he inevitably was caught. Today, listen to the story of one man who chose to paddle toward the existential crisis that is life, crossing the Atlantic alone in a kayak. No retired man in Poland can afford to do these things, Doba explained. When he docked his kayak at the port in Le Conquet, France, on Sept. 3, 2017, he was a few days shy of his 71st birthday. [2] *The official fanpage of Aleksander Doba. Doba does not regret this experience. Three weeks later, he reached Florida. Over the years, he, like Gabriela, had made internal accommodations to his fathers adventures. They are falling, falling a catastrophe is about to happen. This story is one of four extraordinary journeys published in the magazine's Voyages issue.Read the rest here: Nonetheless, on May 29, 2016, Doba kayaked out from the New Jersey shore near the Statue of Liberty. On April 19, 2014, Doba, who is now 68, paddled the final stroke of his 7,716-mile transatlantic journey, docking OLO, his 23-foot kayak, in a marina in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Aleksander Doba appears to be one such individual. 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. 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. 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. Daily News. However, in general, from my very low point of observation, the ocean looked clean. When Doba finally said, I will go on the North Atlantic, I said, I will not participate in this, Arminski told me. 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. [1] In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across the Atlantic. Phone, bad. He gave the thumbs down. His fingernails and toenails just about peeled off. 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. Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. His body appears to be assembled from parts belonging to people of vastly different ages. This was his second crossing, and he estimates that, due to his drift in currents, he paddled some 7,000 miles - this from a 67 year old man sporting a long, grey beard. 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). A mans world? [11] Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. Aleksander Doba, a Polish adventurer who kayaked alone across the Atlantic at the age of 70 while subsisting on his wifes fortifying plum jam after having twice paddled solo across the Atlantic when he was in his 60s died on Feb. 22 on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. The more you dont believe in Polish people, the more determined we are. 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. Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. Every two weeks, he would make another loop. Aleksander Doba: On both routes, I saw floating garbage close to the coasts of Africa and Europe. Finally, the kayaks rudder snapped in the storm, and, unable to battle against the trade winds with a broken rudder, Doba was forced to retreat to Bermuda to have his boat repaired. Three years later in 2013 he crossed the . This does not feel good.. On April 19, 2014, Doba, who is now 68, paddled the final stroke of his 7,716-mile transatlantic journey, docking OLO, his 23-foot kayak, in a marina in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. 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. Dobas apartment building is a five-story cube of blank concrete, with blank concrete stairwells. Doba paddled naked. We know who this is. Create Biography . So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. 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. 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. 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. Then, on Dec. 19, Dobas phone stopped working. The tool he used to accomplish this was a sea anchor, basically a parachute, secured to the stern of the kayak with a rope, that he set underwater to increase drag. Reviews, News & Stories Paddling Buyer's Guide Paddling Trip Guide. In 1989, he surpassed the record for the most days paddled by a Polish man in a single year. Every time he closed his eyes, Doba told me, I dreamed I was paddling in the winter in Poland. He lost 45 pounds. Then shed leave. His hair and beard appear to be taken from a Michelangelo painting of God. I paddle when I would like. His skin broke out in salt-induced rashes, including blisters in his armpits and groin. 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. I was the one who would have to pay! he says. The First Transatlantic Kayak Expedition was to check myself and my kayak. Not according to biology or history. A storm had damaged his rudder. The voyage took him 196 days to complete, and he paddled 6,300 miles. 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. I joked with Gabriela that this was her Atlantic. Three days in, Doba received his first storm warning. I read a post on Men's Journal from 2014 that recounts Doba's paddle across the Atlantic from Portugal to Florida. A Polish adventurer who crossed the Atlantic three times by kayak unaided has died climbing Kilimanjaro, his family said on Tuesday. He started in Lisbon, Portugal on October 5th, 2013 and the goal was to arrive in Florida sailing 5,400 nautial miles. Suffering tends to do more for the flagellant than it does for the flagellants loved ones. He has no interest in dying in his bed. She threatened divorce. His son Czeslaw said the cause was asphyxia resulting from high-altitude pulmonary edema. He does love Gabriela, however, and he does not want to cause her more pain. My decision to continue didnt take longer than a few seconds.. Doba was ready, Chmielinski suspected, to just drift off into the eternal vastness and go down with his ship. It was raining. Doba has a deep, almost performance-art-like sense of this. Kayak fishing became very popular during the recession of around 2008-2010 when gas prices were soaring and recreational boating was becoming too expensive for . This site is to promote polish paddler Aleksander Doba and his highly respectable . He talks about his amazing adventures with passion and energy. He used to take his two young sons on expeditions so demanding that his wife Gabriela would check their physical condition . It is basically an avalanche of water. You can be made small by life or rage against it. Three times, he paddled 200 to 300 miles, only to get pushed back by the winds and currents. In the early 1970s, Mr. Doba graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. 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. A National Geographic team has made the first ascent of the remote Mount Michael, looking for a lava lake in the volcanos crater. 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? His skin looks 71. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. Gabriela joined us to talk at the dining table, where she had set bowls of peanuts, raisins, chocolates, cookies and cake and French presses of coffee and tea. Her last article for the magazine was about a Chinese mafia don. The departure for the second trip, from Portugal to Florida, turned out to be very abrupt. 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 later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post. He is a family man, whose positive attitude to life is contagious. The plan was that if Doba was late, Gabriela would write with a stick in the dirt: I WAS HERE. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. With a long grey beard, a big smile on the face and the looks of a pensioner on holiday, Aleksander Doba didn . Transatlantic crossings are passages of passengers and cargo across the Atlantic Ocean between Europe or Africa and the Americas. Many things can go wrong while at sea, and if something does go wrong, help can be . One day, a colleague of Dobas said the factorys kayaking club was going on a two-week expedition. Sketch in hand, Doba drove from Police to Szczecin, the regional capital, and approached a yacht-builder named Andrzej Arminski. Doba tried to heat the pin with his camping stove and smash it straight. Then a woman who noticed me coughing approached with a little glass of thick red liquid that looked like cough syrup. Once he got far enough out from the shore, he spent most of the trip naked, deciding it was more comfortable. 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. He said it because he has reimagined the concept of crisis, just as he has reimagined the concept of suffering. Doba was blown to the beach and called the trip off. The kayak OLO was professionally designed and made in Andrzej Arminski shipyard located in Szczecin, Poland . He did have a satellite phone, and he texted with Arminski, who, as his trip navigator, sent a regular forecast for wind and weather. He tried to drill holes in the rudder and attach the rudder to the stern with plastic ties. What is wind chill, and how does it affect your body? 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.) These involved such things as catamarans sailing in from the Bahamas and helicopters dropping rudder-repair gift packages out of the sky. Its good?. Aleksander Doba on February 16, 2015 at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw, Poland. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired . One of the last people to see Mr. Doba alive was a Polish climber named Boguslaw Wawrzyniak, who was also summiting Kilimanjaro that day. Ninety-nine days after leaving Senegal, Doba arrived in Brazil. He said many times that he didnt want to die in his bed, his son said. Nobody cares if you cross the Atlantic in a kayak. The ships captain didnt think it was a great idea to set this rash-covered, sleep-deprived 70-year-old man back in the ocean alone. When does spring start? In 2013, when he paddled from Portugal to Florida, a Greek tanker made the mistake of trying to rescue him. Yet, at least for me, the river was magic calm, mysterious and alive. Dobas goal was to go continent to continent between the mainlands, from Senegal to Brazil, unsupported. A former chemical plant engineer who lived in a little river town, Mr. Doba had long been the most accomplished kayaker in his country. An early escapade involved kayaking on the Baltic Sea at a time when the Communist Party, to discourage defectors, had declared it illegal. The primary challenge is not physical. Why wetlands are so critical for life on Earth, Rest in compost? Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. During the worst of it, the rope on his sea anchor broke. When he saw shooting stars at night, he made wishes that, he said, later came true. Physically, Doba did not seem to experience any difficulty beyond some uncomfortable and persistent skin rashes caused by prolonged exposure to saltwater. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. A crisis, in Dobas worldview, is an opportunity for triumph. It was his 3rd crossing without a sail. [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. Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week. (See map on left). A freighter picked him up, and its Filipino crew repaired the rudder. He witnessed the formation of storm clouds and the deafening calm that accompanied them. For a while, once again, on this second expedition, all was smooth. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. Dobas father, a master at building and repairing things from scraps, made his son a bike. On it, he has written the names of rivers he has paddled. 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. 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. Doba declined the ropes the crew offered to throw him. Id been feeling buried, by stuff exactly as predictable as youd imagine for a working mother of two kids. Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer for the magazine. 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. Doba with Mr. Olek, the kayak he uses on rivers locally. [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). It didnt work. I was infected with a virus. In 2003, when he was already the most seasoned kayaker in Poland, a Polish professor approached him to get advice on his quest to kayak across the Baltic Sea. 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. His chest looks 50. 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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. AD: When I was alone on the ocean I had no fear for my life. [18], Doba died while climbing Kilimanjaro on February 22, 2021. 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 did work, in that Doba managed to drill the holes, but he couldnt steer.) Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. After his salt-water-drenched clothes became too irritating, he navigated the rest of his trip buck naked. The second trip was to raise the bar, Doba says. He had slept only three hours the night before and had not even had time to double-check all his gear. It was like my wishes came true. The biggest piece of junk floating in the water was a shattered, plastic 200-liter trash barrel. Doba didnt begin kayaking until the age of 34 and didnt train physically for the journey. He was 74. After taking in the view, he sat on a rock to rest. Then he sat down and fell asleep.. In mid-September 2013, Doba still did not possess all the gear he wanted to take on his trip. Arminski agreed to build the boat, and in spring of 2010, Olo, as Doba named his kayak after his own nickname, Olek was complete. Touch device users, explore by touch or . Shortly after, a huge Greek ship steamed alongside Doba, seeking to rescue him. 2 November 2015. 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. 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. 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. He ate freeze-dried chicken tikka masala and the occasional raw tiny flying fish that landed on his deck. 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. Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. Aleksander Doba in the Atlantic before arriving in Florida in April 2014. (He ate all the meat options first.) He trained by jogging up and down the stairs of a high-rise building with a heavy backpack, and he took long daily hikes. Doba was a little disappointed. He spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. In truth, my own trip had not been as peaceful as Id hoped. Through the ocean. One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. The trip was a fiasco. If you arent willing to suffer, you can do nothing. He passed out. Long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba is at it again. Do you know how fast they go? he said. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. (Leaving shore is one of the trickiest parts of a trans-Atlantic journey.) He was a few . Dec 20, 2019 - Polish adventurer and kayaker Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic by kayak a few days before turning 71 years old. When a few landed on my kayak, I didnt have to eat my lyophilized food for dinner that night.. X Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. Once Poland became a democracy, social structures and attitudes changed. The day I arrived in Warsaw, a very chic woman named Martyna Wojciechowska, the host of a Polish documentary TV show called Woman at the End of the World, showed up at my hotel to explain Doba to me. Several books have been written about his adventures, including three written by Doba himself.[21]. Polish adventurer Aleksander "Olek" Doba paddles across the Atlantic by Kayak from Lisbon, Portugal to New Smyrna Beach in Florida:.