[4] He studied mechanical engineering at Poznan University of Technology and worked in a chemical factory most of his life. Aleksander Doba is a Polish traveler and explorer. After another storm, Olos rudder was seriously damaged, so he reluctantly contacted his team via satellite phone seeking help. In three weeks, Ill be 71, he says in one. The First Transatlantic Kayak Expedition was to check myself and my kayak. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world bu The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. But so what? Transatlantic passenger crossings became faster, safer, and more reliable with the advent of steamships in the 19th century. He did not want to be saved, so he waved the Greeks off. The triumph of Aleksander Doba. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. His skin looks 71. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Shortly after, a huge Greek ship steamed alongside Doba, seeking to rescue him. These skeletons may have the answer, Scientists are making advancements in birth controlfor men, Blood cleaning? This man rowed a fucking houseboat across an ocean, absolutely unreal. During a storm, the water below the oceans surface stays relatively still; what moves radically are the waves. She knew I didnt like it.. During his voyages he admired the majesty of the sea and relished wonders that he alone was privy to. In recent years, Mr. Doba enjoyed celebrity status in Poland. For 110 days, Mr. Doba paddled eastward on his specially designed fiberglass kayak, Olo. He has no interest in dying in his bed. For a while the crossing was drama-free. Dobas apartment building is a five-story cube of blank concrete, with blank concrete stairwells. The first time I visited my future mother-in-law, she served ducks blood soup. 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. Doba paddled naked. Doba and his wife, Gabriela, at home in Police. Mr. Dobas three daring voyages earned him Guinness World Records titles, and in 2017 he became the oldest person to kayak across the Atlantic. They are falling, falling a catastrophe is about to happen. [11] They offered to throw him ropes. On the morning of Feb. 22, he reached Kilimanjaros summit with two guides. It is simply too dangerous. Forty-two hours after leaving, they washed up back on the beach. Aleksander Doba is no stranger to long ocean crossings. A sea kayak or touring kayak is a kayak developed for the sport of paddling on open waters of lakes, bays, and the ocean. He kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean three times, the last time in 2017, when he was 70. 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. Absolutely no. 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. For a while, once again, on this second expedition, all was smooth. 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. Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week. 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. Please be respectful of copyright. And he began preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, an expedition that had long been on his bucket list. Or the afternoon, a week later, on that same river, when he succumbed to the temptation of eating pancakes, tomato soup and rice at the Milk Bar restaurant when he should have been at his campsite, by his kayak, eating cold canned goulash in order to condition his body for arctic temperatures. Hed been at sea 110 days, alone, having last touched land that May at New Jerseys Barnegat Bay. He refused. Phone, bad. He gave the thumbs down. A mans world? Me, fine, he shouted in English, pointing to himself and giving the thumbs up. 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 woke up on shore to the sound of screaming his own. His first crossing was in 2011, from Senegal, West Africa, to Brazil, a 99-day journey. Navigating OLO was much more difficult than a usual kayak. In the early 1970s, Mr. Doba graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. I never expected it would be so big, she said. Touch device users, explore by touch or . AD: OLO is 23 feet long and three feet wide and weighs 1,100 pounds, and I used a nine-foot-long kayak paddle. But Mr. Doba had tested the limits of possibility during his two previous Atlantic crossings. I am not German always 9 a.m. paddle, he explained. He tried to drill holes in the rudder and attach the rudder to the stern with plastic ties. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired engineer with a thick white beard and a piercing gaze, was a popular figure in Poland. 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. Water trapped in Olos storage lockers short-circuited the electric desalinator. I dont like it at all. A real katorga, says Doba, who is Polish katorga being the Polish word for forced labor in Siberia. The first person in the world to paddle from Europe to America in a kayak across the Atlantic Ocean's widest point, Aleksander Doba also holds the record for the number of days (142) spent in a kayak in the ocean. Doba did anyway. Every two weeks, he would make another loop. He preferred to be dropped off on a cold river in the middle of the snow.. 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. He started in Lisbon, Portugal on October 5th, 2013 and the goal was to arrive in Florida sailing 5,400 nautial miles. He died while climbing Kilimanjaro after reaching the mountain summit. 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? I was infected with a virus.. The rope tethering Doba to the kayak came undone. It is basically an avalanche of water. Doba with Mr. Olek, the kayak he uses on rivers locally. The next time I visited, my mother-in-law did not prepare that soup. So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. He hungered to paddle across an ocean so vast it seemed infinite. A week later, three bandits went through my stuff for half an hour. Dobas stinking foam sleeping pad and other gear from Olo remain, at Gabrielas request, all these months later, on the balcony. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility. Without the wings, the kayak had greater lateral stability and was less sensitive to wind. Shoot, the devil says. The World's Greatest Hitchhiker . 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. He thought about his dead parents. Imagine a plane the size of a kayak hitting turbulence, but in water rather than air; at sea level, water is hundreds of times denser. It felt good. Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. Then, on Dec. 19, Dobas phone stopped working. The Pole has announced that he will set off in May on what will be his third - and possibly toughest - Atlantic Crossing. 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. 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. [1] In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across the Atlantic. Your . I know you will not jump. And the Polish man jumps., Wojciechowska looked at me squarely, to make sure I understood. 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. National Geographic . 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. Aleksander Doba (born 9 September 1946) is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. Doba did finally accept help two weeks later. 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. He once became convinced that someone was watching him. A Record-Breaking Atlantic Crossing by Kayak. 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. He was happy to see his friends, team and the warm Welcome of the Bretons. After taking in the view, he sat on a rock to rest. So I thought: Well, he might not come back.. I did it with no stuntman, Doba told me proudly. Their three sons, Dobas uncles, disappeared. Physically, Doba did not seem to experience any difficulty beyond some uncomfortable and persistent skin rashes caused by prolonged exposure to saltwater. 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 held a marine yacht skipper certificate. He was pummeled again by wind and waves. This site is to promote polish paddler Aleksander Doba and his highly respectable .
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