If . Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. In video footage of the hour before he left, Doba looks wrecked exhausted and on the verge of tears. It is simply too dangerous. To go into the sea and die that would be a problem for my family and a problem for Andrzej Arminski, too, Doba acknowledged. All the big muscles in the body are useless. Along the way, he was thrown from his kayak in a storm. Sadly, he passed away this week while climbing Kilimanjaro. Aleksander Doba Olo . In recent years, Mr. Doba enjoyed celebrity status in Poland. He is one of two people in the world to kayak across the Atlantic without a sail. Aleksander Doba is a Polish traveler and explorer. But this trip felt different. He was assaulted by hailstorms of flying fish. These skeletons may have the answer, Scientists are making advancements in birth controlfor men, Blood cleaning? When a few landed on my kayak, I didnt have to eat my lyophilized food for dinner that night.. At the age of 70, Aleksander Doba became a legend with the kayak. He wanted to tough out his original plan. He paddled and he paddled and he paddled and he paddled, a real katorga. He told me that he took his father to the airport for his most recent crossing. He has kayaked solo across the Atlantic 3 times, most recently in 2017 at the age of 70. . Your . Then a woman who noticed me coughing approached with a little glass of thick red liquid that looked like cough syrup. Chmielinski interpreted this communication blackout as a sign that Doba was deeply despairing, perhaps because he was alone again after being with the crew on Baltic Light, perhaps because, now that he had accepted help, he worried that he would not earn a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for kayaking solo from continent to continent unsupported. Dobas apartment building is a five-story cube of blank concrete, with blank concrete stairwells. 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. [4] He studied mechanical engineering at Poznan University of Technology and worked in a chemical factory most of his life. An early escapade involved kayaking on the Baltic Sea at a time when the Communist Party, to discourage defectors, had declared it illegal. I did not think I could find myself in something so downing, he texted to Chmielinski, somewhat incomprehensibly, two weeks later. She felt bad about it, she said, and she felt judged, but here we were, werent we? On the kayak. I was not in a great state. A crisis, in Dobas worldview, is an opportunity for triumph. His odyssey concluded that September when he paddled into the port in Le Conquet, France. Brent Stirton/Getty Images, for The New York Times, Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times. The risk of kayaking the North Atlantic, Arminski believed, was irresponsibly, even amorally high. NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. . What is wind chill, and how does it affect your body? I even do oceanic expeditions as a tourist. Home. His eyes blew up with conjunctivitis. But Mr. Doba had tested the limits of possibility during his two previous Atlantic crossings. During the worst of it, the rope on his sea anchor broke. I never expected it would be so big, she said. Doba signed up for the factory kayaking trip and went again the following year. You can sit and die. He kept chasing adventure. In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across . Mr Doba, from Poland, came ashore at Le Conquet, Brittany, which is . But so what? It felt good. 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. Its good?. 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 . The rope tethering Doba to the kayak came undone. But this specific soup I dont like. That was a shock to his mother-in-law, he said, but a short one. I hope they will learn not to be afraid to dream, turn dreams into plans, and bring plans to reality. Sketch in hand, Doba drove from Police to Szczecin, the regional capital, and approached a yacht-builder named Andrzej Arminski. The 68 year-old mechanical engineer from the Polish city of Police, talked to Polska.pl about wind traps, the glistening . At 67 years old, a Polish kayaker completes the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic in history. Joakim Eskildsen is a Danish photographer based outside Berlin. Please be respectful of copyright. [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. For 110 days, Mr. Doba paddled eastward on his specially designed fiberglass kayak, Olo. 75 year old adventurer climbed on the highest mountain of Africa and soon after passed away. A Polish adventurer who crossed the Atlantic three times by kayak unaided has died climbing Kilimanjaro, his family said on Tuesday. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. He spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. His fingernails and toenails just about peeled off. Eventually they found him a ride, and Doba paddled away during a storm. ) so that she could compare it with the condition of her children upon their return. Navigating OLO was much more difficult than a usual kayak. 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. His kayak,I rowed varsity crew in highschool and got into kayaking and poling in college. The more you dont believe in Polish people, the more determined we are. 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. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean. He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. He did not say this because hes nave. He then reached Acara at 17:50 local time (99 days, 6 h, 20 min). AD: No, although 40 nights of strenuous effort to break out of the trap of unfavorable winds in the Bermuda Triangle drained me very much. It looks good, it smells good, probably everybody likes it. 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. Chmielinski and others came up with what Doba describes as exotic and expensive methods of rescue. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world bu The next time I visited, my mother-in-law did not prepare that soup. On it, he has written the names of rivers he has paddled. 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. In 2013, when he paddled from Portugal to Florida, a Greek tanker made the mistake of trying to rescue him. The Daily. Aleksander Doba has died age 74 on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania on Monday February 22. He thought about his dead parents. Gabriela, she says, was to be honest, a little pissed that Doba was going again. Forty-seven days after it stopped working, the phone came back on. Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer for the magazine. Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. Rather, he said, I was infected with a virus.. Forty-two hours after leaving, they washed up back on the beach. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. Doba did finally accept help two weeks later. In 2010, when he kayaked from Senegal to Brazil, his skin broke out in salt-induced rashes, his fingernails nearly peeled off, and his eyes suffered from conjunctivitis. Olo is 300 kilograms empty. After four months at sea, Polish adventure kayaker Aleksander Doba has arrived in Bermuda where he will make repairs to his broken rudder before continuing o. He said many times that he didnt want to die in his bed, his son said. 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. His hair and beard appear to be taken from a Michelangelo painting of God. Dobas maternal grandfather, a high-ranking officer in the czarist army, was poisoned in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility, he told The Times. Aleksander Doba in 2016. AD: When I was alone on the ocean I had no fear for my life. 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. Doba maintains that his need to cross the Atlantic in a kayak did not originate within him. On April 19 at 4:18 PM, Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba, 67, became the first person to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean at its widest point - 5,400 . 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. They offered to throw him ropes. I was just paddling down the river, he explained. Doba has a deep, almost performance-art-like sense of this. Transatlantic passenger crossings became faster, safer, and more reliable with the advent of steamships in the 19th century. (Doba doesnt speak much English, so we communicated through a translator.) When he arrived at his destination, he was greeted by one journalist. . Long COVID patients turn to unproven treatments, Why evenings can be harder on people with dementia, This disease often goes under-diagnosedunless youre white, This sacred site could be Georgias first national park, See glow-in-the-dark mushrooms in Brazils other rainforest, 9 things to know about Holi, Indias most colorful festival, Anyone can discover a fossil on this beach. He was greeted by one journalist and the Polish ambassador. This time he would paddle from west to east, from New York to Lisbon where he would celebrate his 70th birthday after having spent . This site is to promote polish paddler Aleksander Doba and his highly respectable . The Polish . Eco-friendly burial alternatives, explained. 70-year old Polish long-distance kayaker Aleksander Doba has embarked on a third attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a kayak, departing New York City for Portugal, on a three-month long, 3000 . Then the devil gets to the Polish man. He tries the reasons he used on the German and French men, without success. A sea kayak or touring kayak is a kayak developed for the sport of paddling on open waters of lakes, bays, and the ocean. Nie chce byc malym szarym czlowiekiem, he told me. His body appears to be assembled from parts belonging to people of vastly different ages. Aleksander Doba appears to be one such individual. He was 74. He lost 14kg in 14 weeks of the journey. It should be noted that he accomplished it using only weekends and normal, 26-day leave. 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. He didnt particularly want to be rescued, anyway. A National Geographic team has made the first ascent of the remote Mount Michael, looking for a lava lake in the volcanos crater. 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) Shoot, the devil says. After his salt-water-drenched clothes became too irritating, he navigated the rest of his trip buck naked. 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.. 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 . Three years later in 2013 he crossed the . 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. Then, on Dec. 19, Dobas phone stopped working. [5][6], Doba's first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was from Senegal to Brazil in 2010 and spanned 5394 kilometers. But the inside of the apartment feels much better: shoes in the entrance hall; pencil marks of grandchildrens heights in the kitchen door jamb; atlases, kayaking trophies and snow globes of family photos in the living room. His son Czeslaw said the cause was asphyxia resulting from high-altitude pulmonary edema. 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. Can we bring a species back from the brink?, Video Story, Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, Copyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. I read a post on Men's Journal from 2014 that recounts Doba's paddle across the Atlantic from Portugal to Florida. That October, he paddled from Senegal to Brazil in 99 days. Doba with Mr. Olek, the kayak he uses on rivers locally. The triumph of Aleksander Doba. The Search for Joshua Tree's Missing Hiker. A normal person wants to sit by the fire with their family for Christmas, his son added. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. Many things can go wrong while at sea, and if something does go wrong, help can be . GitHub export from English Wikipedia. Will he cross the Atlantic again? The ships captain was hesitant to let the disheveled man back into the ocean alone. He rode through 30-foot waves. He once became convinced that someone was watching him. Heres why each season begins twice. The primary challenge is not physical. Chmielinski had a hard time finding a ship captain on the island who was willing, in dangerous weather, to put Doba back out in the ocean near where hed gone off course. kontakt: [email protected] When Mr. Doba encountered border patrol soldiers, they told him that he was in serious breach of the law. According to multiple Polish media reports . Doba did not consent. And yet Doba describes his youth as magical, almost fantastical. How a zoo break-in changed the life of an owl called Flaco, Naked mole rats are fertile until they die, study finds. Aleksander Doba decided to kayak across the Atlantic three times between the ages of 63 and 71 because he didn't want to be "a little gray man". The ships captain didnt think it was a great idea to set this rash-covered, sleep-deprived 70-year-old man back in the ocean alone. Dozens of sharks checked on me, but one was ready to attack me, and I had to whack his head with the paddle really hard to make him leave, Doba remembers. 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. Then Doba sketched out a design for a new boat that could make the trip. I did it with no stuntman, Doba told me proudly. Polish long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba was planning to set off to attempt an Atlantic Ocean crossing alone at the age of 69 years. But this voyage was too dangerous, she told me, to keep her head where she liked it to be, stuck in the sand. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired engineer with a thick white beard and a piercing gaze, was a popular figure in Poland. The kayak OLO was professionally designed and made in Andrzej Arminski shipyard located in Szczecin, Poland . Me, fine, he shouted in English, pointing to himself and giving the thumbs up. 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. Doba had promised himself he would be tougher than all that. How did this mountain lion reach an uninhabited island? If you arent willing to suffer, you can do nothing. He did have a satellite phone, and he texted with Arminski, who, as his trip navigator, sent a regular forecast for wind and weather. He does love Gabriela, however, and he does not want to cause her more pain. How many capsizes can you survive?. Actualizado a 24/02/2021 12:40 CET. It started with a small diatribe on the tyranny of politeness that dictates a houseguest must always say he likes everything his host serves him and the problem that results: Youre fed food you dont like again and again. Can we bring a species back from the brink? 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. Aleksander Doba was the most accomplished trans-oceanic solo kayaker in the world, who continued setting records into his seventies. (Very fine, he said. Its 20-meter-long tail was wagging. Aleksander Doba, honorary citizen of the city, is dead", "Why He Kayaked Across the Atlantic at 70 (for the Third Time)", "Aleksander Doba tym razem wituje z rodzin", "Aleksander Doba, Adventurers of the Year 2014/2015 - National Geographic", "Arsoba Travel:: sztuka podrowania - Kajakiem DOOKOA BAJKAU w pojedynk:: lato 2009", "Aleksander Doba - Samotnie Kajakiem Przez Atlantyk", "Wspomnienie Aleksandra Doby. Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. So Doba moves toward the crisis, just as he moves toward the suffering. Recently, just before his 71 st birthday, he sailed single-handed across the Atlantic for the third time in his kayak. Doba also called his wife, twice. The whole nation was starving. It was his 3rd crossing without a sail. His father built him a bicycle from scrap parts, and when he was 15 he rode it across the country. Polish Kayaker Is Paddling Across the Atlantic for the Third Time 69-year-old Aleksander Doba left New York on Sunday in a kayak bound for Portugal. The World's Greatest Hitchhiker 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. To prove themselves, Polish people will endure everything. Polish sea kayaker Aleksander Doba - known for making the transatlantic journey from Europe to North America aboard a kayak - passed away this week. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. 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. The fabric smelled horrendous and aggravated his skin, so he abandoned clothes. Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. His first crossing was in 2011, from Senegal, West Africa, to Brazil, a 99-day journey. AD: Before the first Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, my wife tried very hard to make me drop such an idea. Doba paddled naked. Suffering tends to do more for the flagellant than it does for the flagellants loved ones. 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. And a tourist does not prepare himself too much. It's unique design is compromise between safety during extreme ocean challenge, and feeling that it should be close to spirit of kayaking. He kept no schedule. Then the AA batteries for his SPOT personal tracking device failed, and the retired engineer had to rig a new, delicate connection using AAAs. 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. Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. Then there is [the] satisfaction of great achievements.. June 09, 2016. He kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean three times, the last time in 2017, when he was 70. He wasnt a man who necessarily looked forward to spending Christmas with the family, his son Czeslaw said. On Sunday, May 7 2017, Alexander "Olek" Doba, took off from Sandy Hook Bay in New York City in his well-known kayak "OLO". Kind, gracious, enthusiastic Poles kept bringing me shots of alcohol, which I tried to wave off. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. It was like my wishes came true. But still, I was so happy Id gotten away. In October 2010, Doba voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean by kayak, from Senegal to Brazil and completed his trip in February 2011. Not according to biology or history. Every two weeks, he would make another loop. He had always planned to go on three crossings: South, Mid- and North Atlantic. He tried to fix it and failed. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic . He trained by jogging up and down the stairs of a high-rise building with a heavy backpack, and he took long daily hikes. Aleksander Doba, a 64-year-old native of Poland, took off from Dakar, capital of the west African nation of Senegal, back on Oct. 26. These involved such things as catamarans sailing in from the Bahamas and helicopters dropping rudder-repair gift packages out of the sky. 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. He then sat down on a rock and "just fell asleep".[19]. A freighter picked him up, and its Filipino crew repaired the rudder. And then, suddenly, the whale went down and disappeared into the ocean.. First, five bandits robbed me for three hours. Nonetheless, on May 29, 2016, Doba kayaked out from the New Jersey shore near the Statue of Liberty. In 1989, he spent 108 days on the . 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. Aleksander Doba: On both routes, I saw floating garbage close to the coasts of Africa and Europe. When Doba finally said, I will go on the North Atlantic, I said, I will not participate in this, Arminski told me. So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. I was the one who would have to pay! he says. With a long grey beard, a big smile on the face and the looks of a pensioner on holiday, Aleksander Doba didn . This does not feel good.. Doba does not regret this experience. Three times. He is paddling for New Smyrna Beach, Florida, 4,700 nautical miles away. All rights reserved. When he arrived in Brazil he weighed 64kg. This would have been Doba's third transatlantic crossing. MARCH 22, 2018. Log In Once logged in, you can add biography in the database. Aleksander Doba (9 September 1946 22 February 2021) was a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. A Record-Breaking Atlantic Crossing by Kayak. However, in general, from my very low point of observation, the ocean looked clean. Mr. Dobas three trans-Atlantic voyages earned him Guinness World Records titles, and in recent years he enjoyed celebrity status in his native Poland. When people are young, sometimes they are very jealous, she said, and want to keep a piece of their partner for themselves. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. It was his 3rd crossing without a sail. Arminski, the boatbuilder, spent many hours trying to argue Doba out of it. 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. But the community raised money for him, and on Oct. 3, 2013, off he went. People ask me how old I am, and I say, I am not old! Aleksander Doba, 68 years old is the first to complete the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic. Several books have been written about his adventures, including three written by Doba himself.[21]. [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. Water trapped in Olos storage lockers short-circuited the electric desalinator. Someone had forgotten to fund the prepaid credit card that covered the bill. He was happy to see his friends, team and the warm Welcome of the Bretons. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great . 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. She knew I didnt like it.. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. You can be made small by life or rage against it. [4] He used a 23-foot kayak, weighing 1500 pounds when fully loaded. Doba accepted his suggestion that he paddle to Bermuda for a repair. As a young man in Communist Poland, he had joined a local kayaking club, and he took to the sport avidly. Gabriela did not believe he would. 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. His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. After Gabriela told me about Christmas, Doba began telling a story. In the early 1970s, Mr. Doba graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. During his voyages he admired the majesty of the sea and relished wonders that he alone was privy to. Bats and agaves make tequila possibleand theyre both at risk, This empress was the most dangerous woman in Rome. 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. He kayaked the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle. It is basically an avalanche of water. Doba wasnt on a schedule. From what we gather, he was euphoric to reach the summit. The key to surviving a serious storm, Doba says, was to keep his kayak oriented with the stern perpendicular to the waves, so that those waves hit the narrow end of the vessel, instead of broadsiding the boat and rolling it over. He married Gabriela Stucka in 1975, and they settled in a town called Police, where he got a job at a chemical plant. AD: I'm not going to repeat paddling the Atlantic Ocean, but paddling something else maybe. 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. Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. Aleksander Doba, famous Polish traveler, died on 8th of February during his expedition to Kilimanjaro. 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. Aleksander Doba (born 9 September 1946) is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. Still, Doba had no reason to plot a trip across the Atlantic . [7] Then he paddled to the French shore. During the expedition storms threw him off course and he had to sail 1,300 additional nautical miles to . So the devil says to the German man: You must jump. The 69-year old paddler who gained recognition as a Nat Geo Adventurer of the Year back in 2015 for his 7716 mile (12,417 km) crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, is getting ready to do it all over again. 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. 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. Doba alerted Chmielinski, who alerted Gabriela who didnt really want to know anything about how the trip was going. He refused. I consider myself to be a tourist, he explains. 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). So I thought: Well, he might not come back.. End of the expedition During the voyage, Mr. Doba endured a violent two-day storm that nearly swallowed him whole. Even here at home, Dobas physicality is sui generis. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. (Leaving shore is one of the trickiest parts of a trans-Atlantic journey.) The 70-Year-Old Master Kayaker Then she sat me down at a nearby restaurant, ordered pierogies and borscht and told me a joke.