I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility. But still, I was so happy Id gotten away. 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. Still, the trip was perfect. The departure for the second trip, from Portugal to Florida, turned out to be very abrupt. In October 2010, Doba voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean by kayak, from Senegal to Brazil and completed his trip in February 2011. (Doba doesnt speak much English, so we communicated through a translator.) Through the ocean. He did have a satellite phone, and he texted with Arminski, who, as his trip navigator, sent a regular forecast for wind and weather. An elementary school honored him with a statue in his scruffy, bearded likeness. Aleksander Doba appears to be one such individual. Realizing that Olo might momentarily shatter into pieces, he strapped on a harness and scrambled across the deck to tie on a new anchor before crawling back to his nook. Aleksander Doba: On both routes, I saw floating garbage close to the coasts of Africa and Europe. His father, Wincenty, was a mechanic. The weather report was bad, but Chmielinski had arranged for a lot of press, and an entourage of kayakers had come to paddle out with Doba a ways, and he felt he had a duty to them. It looks straight out of a dystopian young-adult novel in which the state is intent on creating little gray men. Eco-friendly burial alternatives, explained. 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 . 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. The idea was to do the crossing unsupported. 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. He held a marine yacht skipper certificate. A documentary about the life of Aleksander Doba entitled Happy Olo was released in 2017. In 2018, a Polish retiree named Aleksander Doba, at 71, completed his third trans-Atlantic solo crossing, in a 21 kayak he designed. 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. When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. He did not want to be saved, so he waved the Greeks off. With this design the paddler sits up off the water as well. ) so that she could compare it with the condition of her children upon their return. Gabriela did not believe he would. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. I have two sons and two granddaughters. When Doba finally said, I will go on the North Atlantic, I said, I will not participate in this, Arminski told me. The 70-Year-Old Master Kayaker He did it three times, setting records and becoming a national hero in Poland. However, in Brazil, while running the Amazon in my kayak in 2011, I survived two bouts of rogues with firearms and machetes. Aleksander Doba. He witnessed the formation of storm clouds and the deafening calm that accompanied them. He explored countless Polish rivers, and he amassed records and firsts. 2013Aleksander Doba67. Three days in, Doba received his first storm warning. ' laughs intrepid kayaker Aleksander Doba. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. Then he paddled to the French shore. Doba has a deep, almost performance-art-like sense of this. He was a few . He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. What he did not say, what was left hanging in the air, was that it would not be a big problem for him to go into the sea and die. Nonetheless, Gabriela was not prepared for Dobas first trans-Atlantic expedition. Aleksander Ludwik Doba was born on Sept. 9, 1946, in Swarzedz, Poland. Three times. Forty-seven days after it stopped working, the phone came back on. After a while, the boys began to mutiny. On it, he has written the names of rivers he has paddled. 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. After he graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering, Doba met Gabriela Stucka, his future wife, on a backpacking trip. 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. Three times, he paddled 200 to 300 miles, only to get pushed back by the winds and currents. A breaking wave can do whatever it wants to a kayak. There was no engineering Olo for this. Forty-two hours after leaving, they washed up back on the beach. Do you know how fast they go? he said. Navigating OLO was much more difficult than a usual kayak. That October, he paddled from Senegal to Brazil in 99 days. Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. 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. [2] I never expected it would be so big, she said. Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic solo by the longest route, unaided and without a sail. (This did work, in that Doba managed to drill the holes, but he couldnt steer.) 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. UPDATE: The votes are inmore than 521,000 of them, more than ever beforeand we have a winner. 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. He is a family man, whose positive attitude to life is contagious. Doba drifted around for days eating freeze-dried goulash and chocolate bars. 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. Yet, at least for me, the river was magic calm, mysterious and alive. 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. 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. The Olo, Doba's 2010 kayak. The Daily. 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. Along with jars of his wifes plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars and homemade wine. Her last article for the magazine was about a Chinese mafia don. Sean Dudley. 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 . sport. Alexander Doba returns to the Atlantic. Doba did not consent. So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. 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. On the warmer part of the Atlantic Ocean, flying fish were a big, unexpected attraction. The Pole has announced that he will set off in May on what will be his third - and possibly toughest - Atlantic Crossing. He didnt particularly want to be rescued, anyway. (Leaving shore is one of the trickiest parts of a trans-Atlantic journey.) Sometimes he took his young sons, Bartek and Czesiek, born in 1979 and 1982. Three weeks later, he reached Florida. He died while climbing Kilimanjaro after reaching the mountain summit. 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). 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. He arrived in Tanzania last month. Eventually they found him a ride, and Doba paddled away during a storm. Id never seen him like that. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. I read a post on Men's Journal from 2014 that recounts Doba's paddle across the Atlantic from Portugal to Florida. This would have been Doba's third transatlantic crossing. 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. This is an order. And the German man jumps. Doba responded, In that case, Ill be on my way.. He then reached Acara at 17:50 local time (99 days, 6 h, 20 min). Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired engineer with a thick white beard and a piercing gaze, was a popular figure in Poland. Touch device users, explore by touch or . The Polish native had departed from Lisbon, Portugal, on October 5, 2013, with the intention of paddling 5,400 miles across the Atlantic's widest point and arriving in Florida in mid-February. He woke up on shore to the sound of screaming his own. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired . Once he was out past the Statue of Liberty, Doba turned on his GPS. Doba accepted his suggestion that he paddle to Bermuda for a repair. But then Doba turned his SPOT and his phone back on. June 09, 2016. In addition to Czeslaw, Mr. Doba is survived by his wife; another son, Bartek; a sister, Wanda Kedzia; and three grandchildren. 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. Doba did anyway. A former chemical plant engineer who lived in a little river town, Mr. Doba had long been the most accomplished kayaker in his country. There were spiders. Dobas electric desalinator broke, as it did before, and he had to spend several hours a day manually pumping seawater through an extremely fine filter to produce the five to nine liters of fresh water he needed to stay hydrated and prepare his freeze-dried food. The combination of a stable kayak and a higher sitting position make the sit-on-top or SOT kayaks a better design for fishing. "I realized almost immediately that an ordinary kayak can't handle the open . [18], Doba died while climbing Kilimanjaro on February 22, 2021. A normal person wants to sit by the fire with their family for Christmas, his son added. Olo is 300 kilograms empty. The adventurous Pole always had a thirst for what he called katorga (hard labour), says Elizabeth Weil on The Daily. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Still, Doba had no reason to plot a trip across the Atlantic . He was known for his long voyages crossing oceans. At age 64, after 42 years of marriage, she still adores Doba, and her acceptance of him is absolute easier than it used to be, in fact. The trip could have easily ended five days earlier, when Doba was just a few hundred feet off the British coast. 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. From what we gather, he was euphoric to reach the summit. He is currently working on two books, Home Works and Cuba. He last shot a smoke sauna in Estonia for the magazine.Correction: March 23, 2018 An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of Piotr Chmielinskis navigation of the Amazon.