The more you dont believe in Polish people, the more determined we are. It looks good, it smells good, probably everybody likes it. In three weeks, Ill be 71, he says in one. Aleksander Doba Olo . Their three sons, Dobas uncles, disappeared. 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. 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 returned to his cabin somewhat shocked to be alive. Doba declined the ropes the crew offered to throw him. Anyone can read what you share. Even in seemingly reasonable conditions, rogue waves can cause havoc. The risk of kayaking the North Atlantic, Arminski believed, was irresponsibly, even amorally high. In both cases, they held me at gunpoint with rifles, pistols, and machetes. He told me that he took his father to the airport for his most recent crossing. 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. . During a storm, the water below the oceans surface stays relatively still; what moves radically are the waves. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. 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. Before the Iron Curtain fell, the Communist Party declared it illegal to kayak on the Baltic Sea, lest anyone defect. No retired man in Poland can afford to do these things, Doba explained. [14], On September 3, 2017, Doba completed his third solo transatlantic kayak trip when he kayaked into a port in Le Conquet, France from Barnegat Bay, New Jersey in May 2017. (He ate all the meat options first.) Aleksander Doba is no stranger to long ocean crossings. Ocean kayaking is catastrophically monotonous. He explored countless Polish rivers, and he amassed records and firsts. Dobas stinking foam sleeping pad and other gear from Olo remain, at Gabrielas request, all these months later, on the balcony. Doba with the writer on the Brda River in central Poland in January. Id been feeling buried, by stuff exactly as predictable as youd imagine for a working mother of two kids. A former chemical plant engineer who lived in a little river town, Mr. Doba had long been the most accomplished kayaker in his country. 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. Gabriela did not believe he would. The biggest piece of junk floating in the water was a shattered, plastic 200-liter trash barrel. 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). 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. Doba with Olo, the kayak he used to cross the North Atlantic in 2017. Nonetheless, on May 29, 2016, Doba kayaked out from the New Jersey shore near the Statue of Liberty. Dec 20, 2019 - Polish adventurer and kayaker Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic by kayak a few days before turning 71 years old. Still, the trip was perfect. I sense some . 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. For 110 days, Mr. Doba paddled eastward on his specially designed fiberglass kayak, Olo. Do you know how fast they go? he said. 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. He said it because he has reimagined the concept of crisis, just as he has reimagined the concept of suffering. While it was not the first transatlantic kayak crossing in history, Doba was the first one to travel this way from continent to continent and not island to island. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Doba told me when I met him in Poland in January. Aleksander Doba (9 September 1946 - 22 February 2021) was a Polish kayaker and mountain climber. His odyssey concluded that September when he paddled into the port in Le Conquet, France. His pension is $700 a month. He died while climbing Kilimanjaro after reaching the mountain summit. 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. On the kayak. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic . In the early 1970s, Mr. Doba graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. The whale swam here, and there, all around my kayak. [4][17] With his wife Gabriela he had two sons: Bartomiej and Czesaw. His fingernails and toenails just about peeled off. He spent 40 unplanned days and nights wrestling with unfavorable winds and currents that sent him paddling in circles around the notorious Bermuda Triangle. My decision to continue didnt take longer than a few seconds.. [11] Eventually they found him a ride, and Doba paddled away during a storm. It was like my wishes came true. He is a family man, whose positive attitude to life is contagious. He studied the water closely. Create Biography . His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. How did he justify it to himself? By ELIZABETH WEILPhotographs by JOAKIM ESKILDSEN [13], On October 5, 2013, at age 67, he departed from Lisbon (Portugal) for a second transatlantic voyage, with the intention of paddling 5,400 miles across the Atlantic's widest point. He started in Lisbon, Portugal on October 5th, 2013 and the goal was to arrive in Florida sailing 5,400 nautial miles. Three times, he paddled 200 to 300 miles, only to get pushed back by the winds and currents. A documentary about the life of Aleksander Doba entitled Happy Olo was released in 2017. Those were very, very hard times for both of us. He rode through 30-foot waves. The next time I visited, my mother-in-law did not prepare that soup. 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. You can be made small by life or rage against it. I was the one who would have to pay! he says. He kayaked the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle. He knew that the kayak needed to be unsinkable, as well as self-righting, in the event that it capsized, and that it needed lockers to store food and a cabin in which to sleep. Me, fine, he shouted in English, pointing to himself and giving the thumbs up. He had slept only three hours the night before and had not even had time to double-check all his gear. 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. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. He spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. GitHub export from English Wikipedia. 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. Still, Gabriela did not want to be Penelope to Dobas Odysseus. One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. Adventure paddler Aleksander Doba willed his 71-year-old body and 1,600-pound kayak through a 4,000-mile trans-Atlantic journey Four days later, after capsizing repeatedly, Doba finally cleared the Sandy Hook peninsula and left lower New York Bay. After another storm, Olos rudder was seriously damaged, so he reluctantly contacted his team via satellite phone seeking help. He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. 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. [15][16] He has also jumped 14 times with parachute, piloted gliders for a total of 250 hours, and practiced cycling. [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. AD: When I packed things carefully and ate some food, I could lie down on my back. Brent Stirton/Getty Images, for The New York Times, Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times. Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. Once Poland became a democracy, social structures and attitudes changed. Doba was born in 1946 in Swarzedz, Poland, right after the end of World War II, when the country had been run over by the Soviets and the Germans, then bombed to dust. I did not think I could find myself in something so downing, he texted to Chmielinski, somewhat incomprehensibly, two weeks later. 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. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. Doba tried to heat the pin with his camping stove and smash it straight. (This worked a little, but not entirely.). Shortly after, a huge Greek ship steamed alongside Doba, seeking to rescue him. During the trip, he struggled against storms; his rudder was damaged and had to be repaired by sailors from a merchant vessel. And yet Doba describes his youth as magical, almost fantastical. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. When Mr. Doba encountered border patrol soldiers, they told him that he was in serious breach of the law. After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his . 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. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Mr. Doba told The New York Times Magazine in 2018. 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. Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week. She felt bad about it, she said, and she felt judged, but here we were, werent we? 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. So the devil says to the German man: You must jump. Please upgrade your browser. 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. In video footage of the hour before he left, Doba looks wrecked exhausted and on the verge of tears. These involved such things as catamarans sailing in from the Bahamas and helicopters dropping rudder-repair gift packages out of the sky. But Mr. Doba hungered to cross an ocean so vast that it seemed infinite, and he began plotting to kayak the Atlantic. Aleksander Doba: On both routes, I saw floating garbage close to the coasts of Africa and Europe. Meet the man who solo kayaked the Atlantic Ocean - three times. He refused. This would have been Doba's third transatlantic crossing. When does spring start? He has made his own bargain with the human condition. Aleksander Doba, famous Polish traveler, died on 8th of February during his expedition to Kilimanjaro. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. Its 20-meter-long tail was wagging. Absolutely no. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired engineer with a thick white beard and a piercing gaze, was a popular figure in Poland. They offered to throw him ropes. And then, suddenly, the whale went down and disappeared into the ocean.. I never expected it would be so big, she said. MARCH 22, 2018. [18], Doba died while climbing Kilimanjaro on February 22, 2021. After a while, the boys began to mutiny. But this trip felt different.
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