I am generally physically active, ride a bike, work in my garden, and enjoy walking.. He crossed the ocean three different times in one of these and spent several months completely alone. I sense some . I joked with Gabriela that this was her Atlantic. A sea kayak or touring kayak is a kayak developed for the sport of paddling on open waters of lakes, bays, and the ocean. 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. He was at sea for 110 consecutive days. 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. 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. An expedition, he told me. He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. Dobas apartment building is a five-story cube of blank concrete, with blank concrete stairwells. He started in Lisbon, Portugal on October 5th, 2013 and the goal was to arrive in Florida sailing 5,400 nautial miles. His fingernails and toenails just about peeled off. Three times. The new year once started in Marchhere's why, Jimmy Carter on the greatest challenges of the 21st century, This ancient Greek warship ruled the Mediterranean, How cosmic rays helped find a tunnel in Egypt's Great Pyramid, Who first rode horses? His pension is $700 a month. The voyage took him 196 days to complete, and he paddled 6,300 miles. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Dobas sleeping cabin, which he reaches by sliding himself through a portal the size of a laptop, affords him, when hes lying down, 15 inches of headroom. Aleksander Doba spent 110 days alone at sea. After more than three months of paddling, a Polish adventure junkie has crossed the Atlantic in a 23 foot custom kayak. A real katorga, says Doba, who is Polish katorga being the Polish word for forced labor in Siberia. Directories Newly added. I consider myself to be a tourist, he explains. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. [4][17] With his wife Gabriela he had two sons: Bartomiej and Czesaw. 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. But Mr. Doba had tested the limits of possibility during his two previous Atlantic crossings. He refused. AD: When I was alone on the ocean I had no fear for my life. When he was too far from shore to see any birds, Doba was surrounded instead by marine wildlife, from fish and dolphins to turtles, whales, and sharks. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. For 110 days, Mr. Doba paddled eastward on his specially designed fiberglass kayak, Olo. (Leaving shore is one of the trickiest parts of a trans-Atlantic journey.) Once Poland became a democracy, social structures and attitudes changed. He did not want to be saved, so he waved the Greeks off. 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. I even do oceanic expeditions as a tourist. Polish adventurer and kayaker Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic by kayak a few days before turning 71 years old. When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. The whole nation was starving. 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. This is the only one thing you can do.. In 1989, he surpassed the record for the most days paddled by a Polish man in a single year. Aleksander Doba in the Atlantic before arriving in Florida in April 2014. He put on a clean red-and-white shirt, the colors of the Polish flag, and lay down on the grass. She threw herself into her work, which had become far more rewarding than she ever imagined it could when she trained as a social worker in the 1970s. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great . 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. Heres why each season begins twice. AD: OLO is 23 feet long and three feet wide and weighs 1,100 pounds, and I used a nine-foot-long kayak paddle. In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across . 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 spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. 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. Aleksander Doba, famous Polish traveler, died on 8th of February during his expedition to Kilimanjaro. I read a post on Men's Journal from 2014 that recounts Doba's paddle across the Atlantic from Portugal to Florida. The Olo, Doba's 2010 kayak. He is a family man, whose positive attitude to life is contagious. Doba drifted around for days eating freeze-dried goulash and chocolate bars. How many capsizes can you survive?. 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. As a young man in Communist Poland, he had joined a local kayaking club, and he took to the sport avidly. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Doba traveled an average of 30 miles a day, often paddling at night, when the temperatures dropped. This is Gabis Pacific!, Later that afternoon, Bartek, the couples older son, stopped by the apartment with his two elementary-school-age daughters. Your . I wished him luck in reaching the summit, Mr. Wawrzyniak said in a phone interview. Every two weeks, he would make another loop. He hungered to paddle across an ocean so vast it seemed infinite. One year during the kayaking convention, Doba giddily reported, It was minus 18 degrees, and the number of people who showed up was the same!. But the community raised money for him, and on Oct. 3, 2013, off he went. Polish sea kayaker Aleksander Doba - known for making the transatlantic journey from Europe to North America aboard a kayak - passed away this week. These involved such things as catamarans sailing in from the Bahamas and helicopters dropping rudder-repair gift packages out of the sky. 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. His kayak,I rowed varsity crew in highschool and got into kayaking and poling in college. A former chemical plant engineer who lived in a little river town, Mr. Doba had long been the most accomplished kayaker in his country. Forty-two hours after leaving, they washed up back on the beach. Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. 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. Mr Doba, from Poland, came ashore at Le Conquet, Brittany, which is . 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. Doba in Lisbon in October 2013, demonstrating how he would live aboard his kayak. But after she got the bill for $500, she says, the desire to talk decreased. [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. Log In Once logged in, you can add biography in the database. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. Ocean kayaking is catastrophically monotonous. Her department grew to 100 people from five. He told me that he took his father to the airport for his most recent crossing. When he gave me a last hug, maybe he didnt cry, but I saw his eyes, Bartek said. The air that day hovered around 40 degrees about 4 degrees Celsius. He is one of two people in the world to kayak across the Atlantic without a sail. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. Why wetlands are so critical for life on Earth, Rest in compost? (Very fine, he said. Aleksander Doba: On both routes, I saw floating garbage close to the coasts of Africa and Europe. But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. Dobas father, a master at building and repairing things from scraps, made his son a bike. The Greeks got the message and left. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. [7][8] He was 65 years old when he undertook this journey. 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. Aleksander Doba, 70, completed his transatlantic journey on Sunday after setting off on the epic quest from New Jersey in May. [1] In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across the Atlantic. How did he justify it to himself? It's unique design is compromise between safety during extreme ocean challenge, and feeling that it should be close to spirit of kayaking. 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. By ELIZABETH WEIL He wasnt a man who necessarily looked forward to spending Christmas with the family, his son Czeslaw said. Shortly after, a huge Greek ship steamed alongside Doba, seeking to rescue him. 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. A week later, three bandits went through my stuff for half an hour. When he arrived at his destination, he was greeted by one journalist. An early escapade involved kayaking on the Baltic Sea at a time when the Communist Party, to discourage defectors, had declared it illegal. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. Then there is [the] satisfaction of great achievements.. The fabric smelled horrendous and aggravated his skin, so he abandoned clothes. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Mr. Doba told The New York Times Magazine in 2018. Nae redakce mla tu est udlat s Olekem rozhovor v roce 2015, kdy zskal ocenn Dobrodruh roku od National Geographic a kdy ml za sebou teprve dv peplavby Atlantiku. I was the one who would have to pay! he says. After the transition, as the Poles call their countrys change to a democratic government in the early 1990s, Dobas trips became more extreme. 1,277 talking about this. Reviews, News & Stories Paddling Buyer's Guide Paddling Trip Guide. 2 November 2015. Its good?. The adventurous Pole always had a thirst for what he called katorga (hard labour), says Elizabeth Weil on The Daily. "Na szczycie Olek poprosi o 2 minuty przerwy, usiad na kamieniu i po prostu zasn", "Kayaker, 64, completes marathon paddle across Atlantic", "Landfall: Aleksander Doba reaches South America", "Kajakarstwo - Aleksander Doba przepyn Atlantyk", Unofficial blog for Aleksander Doba Transatlantic Kayak Crossing, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aleksander_Doba&oldid=1104141716, Recipients of the Order of Polonia Restituta, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 13 August 2022, at 00:00. Doba paddled naked. Before he arrived in France, he made a few GoPro videos. 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. Anyone can read what you share. If a breaking wave hit Olo with no sea anchor, Doba said, I knew I would roll over many times. During the voyage, Mr. Doba endured a violent two-day storm that nearly swallowed him whole. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired . I was just paddling down the river, he told the border patrol when he inevitably was caught. He trained by jogging up and down the stairs of a high-rise building with a heavy backpack, and he took long daily hikes. Then he paddled to the French shore. But this voyage was too dangerous, she told me, to keep her head where she liked it to be, stuck in the sand. No retired man in Poland can afford to do these things, Doba explained. Three weeks later, he reached Florida. With a long grey beard, a big smile on the face and the looks of a pensioner on holiday, Aleksander Doba didn . [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. Raspberry vodka! 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. Kayaking is an absurd form of long-distance ocean travel. When Doba finally said, I will go on the North Atlantic, I said, I will not participate in this, Arminski told me. For a while the crossing was drama-free. Previous Story: 8.31.17. The biggest piece of junk floating in the water was a shattered, plastic 200-liter trash barrel. In mid-September 2013, Doba still did not possess all the gear he wanted to take on his trip. Every time he closed his eyes, Doba told me, I dreamed I was paddling in the winter in Poland. He lost 45 pounds. He witnessed the formation of storm clouds and the deafening calm that accompanied them. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. His mother, Eugenia (Ilijna) Doba, was a homemaker. The idea was to do the crossing unsupported. 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. 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) He said it because he has reimagined the concept of crisis, just as he has reimagined the concept of suffering. Sean Dudley. Even here at home, Dobas physicality is sui generis. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. 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). People stopped him on the street to take selfies. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. He died while climbing Kilimanjaro after reaching the mountain summit. 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. In video footage of the hour before he left, Doba looks wrecked exhausted and on the verge of tears. His odyssey concluded that September when he paddled into the port in Le Conquet, France. He said many times that he didnt want to die in his bed, his son said. 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. After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his . Eco-friendly burial alternatives, explained. Over the years, he, like Gabriela, had made internal accommodations to his fathers adventures. 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. The plan was that if Doba was late, Gabriela would write with a stick in the dirt: I WAS HERE. NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. Doba had only wanted his phone repaired. It should be noted that he accomplished it using only weekends and normal, 26-day leave. Doba told his wife that he was going to try to cross the Atlantic again. Physically, Doba did not seem to experience any difficulty beyond some uncomfortable and persistent skin rashes caused by prolonged exposure to saltwater. After taking in the view, he sat on a rock to rest. He tried to drill holes in the rudder and attach the rudder to the stern with plastic ties. He died like an adventurer after . 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. Along the way, he was thrown from his kayak in a storm. After his salt-water-drenched clothes became too irritating, he navigated the rest of his trip buck naked. 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. She knew I didnt like it.. During a storm, the water below the oceans surface stays relatively still; what moves radically are the waves. He was unaccustomed to wearing pants. Once he got far enough out from the shore, he spent most of the trip naked, deciding it was more comfortable. Then the devil says to the Frenchman, You must jump. The Frenchman says, What does this mean?. Every three weeks there is a storm with waves that can capsize the kayak. (He ate all the meat options first.) 02/23/21 AT 12:35 PM.