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. The first time I visited my future mother-in-law, she served ducks blood soup. All the big muscles in the body are useless. He has kayaked solo across the Atlantic 3 times, most recently in 2017 at the age of 70. . Sometimes he took his young sons, Bartek and Czesiek, born in 1979 and 1982. But I dont have a film. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Doba told me when I met him in Poland in January. Bigger than the Atlantic! Doba chimed in. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. 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. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired engineer with a thick white beard and a piercing gaze, was a popular figure in Poland. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. By ELIZABETH WEILPhotographs by JOAKIM ESKILDSEN And yet Doba describes his youth as magical, almost fantastical. I have two sons and two granddaughters. The risk of kayaking the North Atlantic, Arminski believed, was irresponsibly, even amorally high. How many capsizes can you survive?. Corley, Apr 21, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating. Doba in Lisbon in October 2013, demonstrating how he would live aboard his kayak. Before he arrived in France, he made a few GoPro videos. Gabriela, she says, was to be honest, a little pissed that Doba was going again. The voyage took him 196 days to complete, and he paddled 6,300 miles. He spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. After another storm, Olos rudder was seriously damaged, so he reluctantly contacted his team via satellite phone seeking help. Still, Doba refused. I was just paddling down the river, he explained. He told me that he took his father to the airport for his most recent crossing. On the morning of Feb. 22, he reached Kilimanjaros summit with two guides. How did he justify it to himself? He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. Doba and his wife, Gabriela, at home in Police. In the early 1970s, Mr. Doba graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. Everyone who cared about Doba opposed his third expedition the cold and stormy North Atlantic, from New Jersey to France. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired . 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. When he arrived in Brazil he weighed 64kg. I am generally physically active, ride a bike, work in my garden, and enjoy walking.. The Polish . One of the last people to see Mr. Doba alive was a Polish climber named Boguslaw Wawrzyniak, who was also summiting Kilimanjaro that day. [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. Doba also called his wife, twice. Then the devil says to the Frenchman, You must jump. The Frenchman says, What does this mean?. But then Doba turned his SPOT and his phone back on. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. I am not German always 9 a.m. paddle, he explained. He refused. After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his . 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. 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. Unauthorized use is prohibited. It was in 2010 that he started seriously planning to cross the Atlantic. 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.. 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. But. Yet, at least for me, the river was magic calm, mysterious and alive. Recently, just before his 71 st birthday, he sailed single-handed across the Atlantic for the third time in his kayak. Heres the technology that helped scientists find itand what it may have been used for. At 15, Doba rode around Poland by himself. 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. Aleksander Doba (born 9 September 1946) is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. A Polish grandfather on Sunday completed his third solo trans-Atlantic kayak crossing, arriving on the French coast 111 days after dipping his paddle into the waters off the US state of New Jersey. [4] He quickly started going on kayaking expeditions regularly. Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba begins his translatlantic kayak adventure from New York to Lisbon on May 29, 2016 in New York. Home. 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. [18], Doba died while climbing Kilimanjaro on February 22, 2021. The majority of Doba with the writer on the Brda River in central Poland in January. 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 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. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility, he told The Times. ) so that she could compare it with the condition of her children upon their return. A Record-Breaking Atlantic Crossing by Kayak. 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. He has made his own bargain with the human condition. Do you know how fast they go? he said. Aleksander Doba. It was like my wishes came true. The primary challenge is not physical. He said many times that he didnt want to die in his bed, his son said. "I realized almost immediately that an ordinary kayak can't handle the open . Several books have been written about his adventures, including three written by Doba himself.[21]. 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. I know you will not jump. And the Polish man jumps., Wojciechowska looked at me squarely, to make sure I understood. He explored countless Polish rivers, and he amassed records and firsts. 2 November 2015. He drank five cups a day of instant coffee. 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 devil, a German man, a Frenchman and a Polish man are all in a hot-air balloon, Wojciechowska said. A freighter picked him up, and its Filipino crew repaired the rudder. I even do oceanic expeditions as a tourist. . Daily News. Nonetheless, on May 29, 2016, Doba kayaked out from the New Jersey shore near the Statue of Liberty. Three times, he paddled 200 to 300 miles, only to get pushed back by the winds and currents. Along the way, he was thrown from his kayak in a storm. 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. 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. Nie chce byc malym szarym czlowiekiem, he told me. Doba signed up for the factory kayaking trip and went again the following year. In 1989, he surpassed the record for the most days paddled by a Polish man in a single year. Eco-friendly burial alternatives, explained. Medicine! she said. This is Gabis Pacific!, Later that afternoon, Bartek, the couples older son, stopped by the apartment with his two elementary-school-age daughters. MARCH 22, 2018. Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. Ninety-nine days after leaving Senegal, Doba arrived in Brazil. 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. By choosing it, he casts himself in the role of hero, not victim. He took us on long trips, only him and us both, in the middle of nowhere, and we hated that, Bartek recalled. Please upgrade your browser. [7][8] He was 65 years old when he undertook this journey. Doba does not regret this experience. Once Poland became a democracy, social structures and attitudes changed. Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. 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). Polish adventurer Aleksander "Olek" Doba paddles across the Atlantic by Kayak from Lisbon, Portugal to New Smyrna Beach in Florida:. He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. 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. An early escapade involved kayaking on the Baltic Sea at a time when the Communist Party, to discourage defectors, had declared it illegal. 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. Even here at home, Dobas physicality is sui generis. Long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba is at it again. Previous generations had not fared better. In video footage of the hour before he left, Doba looks wrecked exhausted and on the verge of tears. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Mr. Doba told The New York Times Magazine in 2018. The kayak would break into many pieces. So, wearing only his harness, Doba exited the cabin, crawled across the bucking deck with a spare sea anchor attached to a rope, tied the rope to his kayak and threw the anchor off the stern. Doba with Mr. Olek, the kayak he uses on rivers locally. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The departure for the second trip, from Portugal to Florida, turned out to be very abrupt. 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. Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. 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. Can we bring a species back from the brink?, Video Story, Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, Copyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. After taking in the view, he sat on a rock to rest. Sadly, he passed away this week while climbing Kilimanjaro. But this trip felt different. Touch device users, explore by touch or . (This worked a little, but not entirely.). This site is to promote polish paddler Aleksander Doba and his highly respectable . It should be noted that he accomplished it using only weekends and normal, 26-day leave. [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. (He ate all the meat options first.) This time he would paddle from west to east, from New York to Lisbon where he would celebrate his 70th birthday after having spent . AD: I'm not going to repeat paddling the Atlantic Ocean, but paddling something else maybe. 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. *Oficjalny fanpage Aleksandra Doby. Doba being helped by the crew of Baltic Light in June 2017, when he had rudder problems during his North Atlantic crossing. He did have a satellite phone, and he texted with Arminski, who, as his trip navigator, sent a regular forecast for wind and weather. [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. He rode through 30-foot waves. Even in seemingly reasonable conditions, rogue waves can cause havoc. As he braced for his life, the rope tethering his sea anchor (the only thing keeping his kayak stable) broke off. He did explain to her how to boil water, which to this day she finds ridiculous. 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. National Geographic . Eventually they found him a ride, and Doba paddled away during a storm. This is an order. And the German man jumps. Aleksander Doba, 70, completed his transatlantic journey on Sunday after setting off on the epic quest from New Jersey in May. The first time Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba tried to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean in 2007, he didn't get far. Doba maintains that his need to cross the Atlantic in a kayak did not originate within him. Mr Doba, from Poland, came ashore at Le Conquet, Brittany, which is . He grew up ice skating on ponds and skiing through forests. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. Actualizado a 24/02/2021 12:40 CET. (See map on left). Kayak legend Aleksander Doba (74 years) Dies on Kilimanjaro Summit. After clearing Barnegat Bay and heading for the horizon, he was soon a floating blip in the ocean. He used to take his two young sons on expeditions so demanding that his wife Gabriela would check their physical condition . Your . I do not want to be a little gray man. This is a common expression in Poland and a good motto for us all. He crossed the ocean three different times in one of these and spent several months completely alone. I never expected it would be so big, she said. It looks straight out of a dystopian young-adult novel in which the state is intent on creating little gray men. 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. Subscribe. He trained by jogging up and down the stairs of a high-rise building with a heavy backpack, and he took long daily hikes.