aleksander doba kayak design

Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post. His hands and forearms look 30, straight off a Montana roper. 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. Daily News. But. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. 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. His father, Wincenty, was a mechanic. He witnessed the formation of storm clouds and the deafening calm that accompanied them. For 110 days, Mr. Doba paddled eastward on his specially designed fiberglass kayak, Olo. He said it because he has reimagined the concept of crisis, just as he has reimagined the concept of suffering. Today. NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. It was like my wishes came true. Gabriela did not believe he would. Then Doba cut the bent portion off the pin with a hacksaw blade hed brought along and jury-rigged a way to control the rudder with carabiners. Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. 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. People stopped him on the street to take selfies. The fabric smelled horrendous and aggravated his skin, so he abandoned clothes. Meet the man who solo kayaked the Atlantic Ocean - three times. I was just paddling down the river, he explained. Id been feeling buried, by stuff exactly as predictable as youd imagine for a working mother of two kids. Nonetheless, Gabriela was not prepared for Dobas first trans-Atlantic expedition. When he arrived in Brazil he weighed 64kg. AD: When I packed things carefully and ate some food, I could lie down on my back. He said many times that he didnt want to die in his bed, his son said. A real katorga, says Doba, who is Polish katorga being the Polish word for forced labor in Siberia. 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. Aleksander Ludwik Doba was born on Sept. 9, 1946, in Swarzedz, Poland. Anyone can read what you share. I was just paddling down the river, he told the border patrol when he inevitably was caught. The devil says, It means that life is meaningless but when you jump you will look very chic, very modern. So the Frenchman jumps. Nobody cares if you cross the Atlantic in a kayak. Medicine! she said. He grew up ice skating on ponds and skiing through forests. Nonetheless, on May 29, 2016, Doba kayaked out from the New Jersey shore near the Statue of Liberty. He was a few days shy of his 71st birthday. Will he cross the Atlantic again? Once Poland became a democracy, social structures and attitudes changed. 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. The First Transatlantic Kayak Expedition was to check myself and my kayak. So the devil says to the German man: You must jump. A National Geographic team has made the first ascent of the remote Mount Michael, looking for a lava lake in the volcanos crater. He was at sea for 110 consecutive days. Doba in Lisbon in October 2013, demonstrating how he would live aboard his kayak. It didnt work. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean. Event producers asked him to just walk onstage and say, in English, Thank you very much. Doba, who wore jeans to the June ceremony, walked onstage and said, Polacy nie gesi i swoj jezyk maja. Polish people are not geese and have their own language. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. Doba traveled an average of 30 miles a day, often paddling at night, when the temperatures dropped. Aleksander Doba, a Polish traveler, adventurer, and world record holder who in his 60s became the first person to kayak unaided across the Atlantic and set the world record for the longest open-water kayaking expedition, has died while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro: The 74-year-old - once named by National Geographic as its Adventurer of the Year - had been "fulfilling his dream . 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. Bats and agaves make tequila possibleand theyre both at risk, This empress was the most dangerous woman in Rome. In 1989, he surpassed the record for the most days paddled by a Polish man in a single year. His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. UPDATE: The votes are inmore than 521,000 of them, more than ever beforeand we have a winner. Your . Then the devil says to the Frenchman, You must jump. The Frenchman says, What does this mean?. (Honestly, you dont need the details.) The World's Greatest Hitchhiker Even in seemingly reasonable conditions, rogue waves can cause havoc. Doba accepted his suggestion that he paddle to Bermuda for a repair. 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. The combination of a stable kayak and a higher sitting position make the sit-on-top or SOT kayaks a better design for fishing. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Then, on Dec. 19, Dobas phone stopped working. *Oficjalny fanpage Aleksandra Doby. He had always planned to go on three crossings: South, Mid- and North Atlantic. 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. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility. The rope tethering Doba to the kayak came undone. In the early 1970s, Mr. Doba graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. I sense some . He refused. His eyes blew up with conjunctivitis. He spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. Create Biography . I consider myself to be a tourist, he explains. His father built him a bicycle from scrap parts, and when he was 15 he rode it across the 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. When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. Bigger than the Atlantic! Doba chimed in. An elementary school honored him with a statue in his scruffy, bearded likeness. I was infected with a virus.. Aleksander Doba is a Polish traveler and explorer. The fact that Doba knows this is clear in his eyes. [4] He studied mechanical engineering at Poznan University of Technology and worked in a chemical factory most of his life. But I dont have a film. I have two sons and two granddaughters. He paddled and he paddled and he paddled and he paddled, a real katorga. I was not in a great state. This man rowed a fucking houseboat across an ocean, absolutely unreal. 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. 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. Doba with Olo, the kayak he used to cross the North Atlantic in 2017. National Geographic . Corley, Apr 21, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. He crossed the ocean three different times in one of these and spent several months completely alone. He did it three times, setting records and becoming a national hero in Poland. The whole nation was starving. He used to take his two young sons on expeditions so demanding that his wife Gabriela would check their physical condition . Hitting the Atlantic ocean the following day, he had waited almost a year for another chance to continue his Third Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, which began on May 29, 2016 . 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. Three days in, Doba received his first storm warning. Juan Villarino waits for a ride in the Namibian desert. He told me that he took his father to the airport for his most recent crossing. 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. Their three sons, Dobas uncles, disappeared. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. His son Czeslaw said the cause was asphyxia resulting from high-altitude pulmonary edema. I read a post on Men's Journal from 2014 that recounts Doba's paddle across the Atlantic from Portugal to Florida. Brent Stirton/Getty Images, for The New York Times, Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times. In addition to Czeslaw, Mr. Doba is survived by his wife; another son, Bartek; a sister, Wanda Kedzia; and three grandchildren. Sadly, he passed away this week while climbing Kilimanjaro. Neither Gabriela nor Bartek took him to the airport. During the third rescue attempt he yelled a Polish vulgarity. He was unaccustomed to wearing pants. I did it with no stuntman, Doba told me proudly. His fingernails and toenails just about peeled off. 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. Gabriela traveled to Denmark to study how European Union countries handled problems like unemployment, alcoholism and lonely young mothers. Dobas apartment building is a five-story cube of blank concrete, with blank concrete stairwells. [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. Dne 22. nora 2021 zemel ve vku 74 let pi vstupu na Kilimandro polsk dobrodruh Aleksander Olek" Doba, kter byl znm hlavn svmi peplavbami Atlantskho ocenu. Without the wings, the kayak had greater lateral stability and was less sensitive to wind. Aleksander Doba is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. Doba declined the ropes the crew offered to throw him. Aleksander Doba was the most accomplished trans-oceanic solo kayaker in the world, who continued setting records into his seventies. It was in 2010 that he started seriously planning to cross the Atlantic. 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. 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 was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic . . Doba tried to heat the pin with his camping stove and smash it straight. He ate freeze-dried chicken tikka masala and the occasional raw tiny flying fish that landed on his deck. Aleksander doba. The first time I visited my future mother-in-law, she served ducks blood soup. Heres why each season begins twice. The new year once started in Marchhere's why, Jimmy Carter on the greatest challenges of the 21st century, This ancient Greek warship ruled the Mediterranean, How cosmic rays helped find a tunnel in Egypt's Great Pyramid, Who first rode horses? I am generally physically active, ride a bike, work in my garden, and enjoy walking.. He explored countless Polish rivers, and he amassed records and firsts. Then he paddled to the French shore. 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. During the worst of it, the rope on his sea anchor broke. It was raining. 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. 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. We know who this is. After a while, the boys began to mutiny. Even here at home, Dobas physicality is sui generis. 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. 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. I dont like it at all. What is wind chill, and how does it affect your body? 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? The Greeks got the message and left. He playfully tapped the shells of turtles that swam alongside him. Doba was blown to the beach and called the trip off. The kayak OLO was professionally designed and made in Andrzej Arminski shipyard located in Szczecin, Poland . He died while climbing Kilimanjaro after reaching the mountain summit. On the kayak. Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. Still, Doba had no reason to plot a trip across the Atlantic . Explore. But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. 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. He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. It's unique design is compromise between safety during extreme ocean challenge, and feeling that it should be close to spirit of kayaking. . Its good?. Dobas response to Gabrielas concern about what hed do in a crisis, if the closest land was the bottom, was to say there will be no crisis. If you have a crisis in the middle of the Atlantic and the closest land is the bottom, she asked, what will you do then? Doba said, There will be no such crisis. She knew she couldnt stop him. Aleksander Doba, 68 years old is the first to complete the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic. In 1989, he spent 108 days on the . An early escapade involved kayaking on the Baltic Sea at a time when the Communist Party, to discourage defectors, had declared it illegal. I paddle when I would like. His skin broke out in salt-induced rashes, including blisters in his armpits and groin. Olo is 300 kilograms empty. [15][16] He has also jumped 14 times with parachute, piloted gliders for a total of 250 hours, and practiced cycling. 02/23/21 AT 12:35 PM. 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. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. She did not want to spend her life stressed, waiting for his return. MARCH 22, 2018. (This worked a little, but not entirely.). . It looks good, it smells good, probably everybody likes it. Someone had forgotten to fund the prepaid credit card that covered the bill. [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 passed out. His skin was bronzed and weathered, his beard long and tangled, but the 67-year-old's mood was upbeat as he raised his arms in triumph after a remarkable crossing that spanned 5,400 miles. He arrived at New Smyrna Beach, Florida on April 19, 2014. He tried to fix it and failed. Me, fine, he shouted in English, pointing to himself and giving the thumbs up. At the age of 70, Aleksander Doba became a legend with the kayak. kontakt: aleksanderdoba@gmail.com The devil, a German man, a Frenchman and a Polish man are all in a hot-air balloon, Wojciechowska said. He spent 40 unplanned days and nights wrestling with unfavorable winds and currents that sent him paddling in circles around the notorious Bermuda Triangle. Sketch in hand, Doba drove from Police to Szczecin, the regional capital, and approached a yacht-builder named Andrzej Arminski. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world bu Aleksander Doba (born 9 September 1946) is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. 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. Polish adventurer and kayaker Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic by kayak a few days before turning 71 years old. After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his . She felt bad about it, she said, and she felt judged, but here we were, werent we? He took us on long trips, only him and us both, in the middle of nowhere, and we hated that, Bartek recalled. Mr. Dobas three daring voyages earned him Guinness World Records titles, and in 2017 he became the oldest person to kayak across the Atlantic. The roughly 5,000-year-old human remains were found in graves from the Yamnaya culture, and the discovery may partially explain their rapid expansion throughout Europe. Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. 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.. The risk of kayaking the North Atlantic, Arminski believed, was irresponsibly, even amorally high. But this specific soup I dont like. That was a shock to his mother-in-law, he said, but a short one. Subscribe. 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. [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. When the ship circled back to him again, Mr. Doba shouted a vulgarity in Polish, and they left for good. 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. (Doba doesnt speak much English, so we communicated through a translator.) He died like an adventurer after . As he braced for his life, the rope tethering his sea anchor (the only thing keeping his kayak stable) broke off. 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. The Olo, Doba's 2010 kayak. Gabrielas accommodations to Dobas lifestyle started in the late 1980s, when Doba became obsessed with kayaking and began insisting that Gabriela drop him and his kayak by the side of the road on the way to her mothers house for Christmas, and then pick up him and his kayak at a prearranged point on her way back home after a few days. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired . Doba paddled naked. In 2010, Doba spent 99 days of the First Transatlantic Kayak Expedition paddling 3,400 nautical miles (3,913 miles) across one of the narrowest points of the Atlantic, between Dakar, Senegal, and Acarau, Brazil. Then there is [the] satisfaction of great achievements.. 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 . [4] He quickly started going on kayaking expeditions regularly. End of the expedition These skeletons may have the answer, Scientists are making advancements in birth controlfor men, Blood cleaning? He had slept only three hours the night before and had not even had time to double-check all his gear. He has no interest in dying in his bed. The brain is removed from the process. Alone at sea without his hearing aids, Doba joked, he grew so disoriented that he started shouting at himself so that I could hear. (Doba is fairly deaf but didnt bring the aids along because theyre expensive and not waterproof, and there was no one to talk to anyway.) X He was greeted by one journalist and the Polish ambassador. How many capsizes can you survive?. But this trip felt different. Unloading OLO from the sloop that returned Doba back to the exact spot where he had been forced off course, the kayak's so-called wings, designed to act as roll bars to keep the vessel upright, broke. On it, he has written the names of rivers he has paddled. If you arent willing to suffer, you can do nothing. The adventurous Pole always had a thirst for what he called katorga (hard labour), says Elizabeth Weil on The Daily. He also snacked on dried fruit and his wifes plum jam, but he ran out of that halfway across the ocean. At 15, Doba rode around Poland by himself. The ships captain was hesitant to let the disheveled man back into the ocean alone. My flu lingered. They are falling, falling a catastrophe is about to happen. A storm had damaged his rudder. I know you will not jump. And the Polish man jumps., Wojciechowska looked at me squarely, to make sure I understood. His pension is $700 a month. His mean speed was 2.26km/h, and he averaged 54km per 24 hours, with a maximum 24hour distance of 126.5km. The biggest piece of junk floating in the water was a shattered, plastic 200-liter trash barrel. The departure for the second trip, from Portugal to Florida, turned out to be very abrupt. He relieved himself by leaning off the side or the stern. But he had promised himself, when he left New Jersey, that he would kayak not just to Europe but to the Continent proper. 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 triumph of Aleksander Doba. But this voyage was too dangerous, she told me, to keep her head where she liked it to be, stuck in the sand. However, in general, from my very low point of observation, the ocean looked clean. Many things can go wrong while at sea, and if something does go wrong, help can be . After the transition, as the Poles call their countrys change to a democratic government in the early 1990s, Dobas trips became more extreme. El polaco Aleksander Doba, que se convirti en la primera persona en cruzar el ocano Atlntico en kayak y en solitario a los 65 aos de edad, falleci el . Doba did anyway. 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 . But the community raised money for him, and on Oct. 3, 2013, off he went. Suffering tends to do more for the flagellant than it does for the flagellants loved ones. All the big muscles in the body are useless. A freighter picked him up, and its Filipino crew repaired the rudder. The majority of (He ate all the meat options first.) Dobas father, a master at building and repairing things from scraps, made his son a bike. 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. It felt good. Doba returned to his cabin somewhat shocked to be alive. 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. Dobas sleeping cabin, which he reaches by sliding himself through a portal the size of a laptop, affords him, when hes lying down, 15 inches of headroom. He tried to drill holes in the rudder and attach the rudder to the stern with plastic ties. He is a family man, whose positive attitude to life is contagious. 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. This does not feel good.. Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week. Physically, Doba did not seem to experience any difficulty beyond some uncomfortable and persistent skin rashes caused by prolonged exposure to saltwater. He drank five cups a day of instant coffee. The Pole has announced that he will set off in May on what will be his third - and possibly toughest - Atlantic Crossing. At 67 years old, a Polish kayaker completes the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic in history. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. Her last article for the magazine was about a Chinese mafia don. He then sat down on a rock and "just fell asleep".[19]. Aleksander Doba appears to be one such individual. Aleksander Doba died as he lived, in pursuit of adventure, passing away on the very summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 74. The idea was to do the crossing unsupported. Phone, bad. He gave the thumbs down. I was in a pickle! To avoid the nightmare of quiet conformity, Doba told me he said to his mother-in-law, This is a good soup! Sean Dudley. Mr. Dobas three trans-Atlantic voyages earned him Guinness World Records titles, and in recent years he enjoyed celebrity status in his native Poland. Adventurer of 2015 ! Over the years, he, like Gabriela, had made internal accommodations to his fathers adventures. In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across . Directories Newly added. This would have been Doba's third transatlantic crossing. You can sit and die. To prove themselves, Polish people will endure everything. Trans Atlantic kayak completed by Aleksander Doba. 2013Aleksander Doba67. For a while the crossing was drama-free. 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. Then I saw it: a huge head, sticking out of the ocean, he told Canoe & Kayak magazine in 2014. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. [7] 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. With this design the paddler sits up off the water as well. Doba was a little disappointed. And he began preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, an expedition that had long been on his bucket list. In photos from the ends of his trips, he looks ecstatic and feral, in the best possible sense, intrinsically wild and free. A former chemical plant engineer who lived in a little river town, Mr. Doba had long been the most accomplished kayaker in his country. Doba maintains that his need to cross the Atlantic in a kayak did not originate within him. A normal person wants to sit by the fire with their family for Christmas, his son added. This time he would paddle from west to east, from New York to Lisbon where he would celebrate his 70th birthday after having spent . How a zoo break-in changed the life of an owl called Flaco, Naked mole rats are fertile until they die, study finds. At the time of this writing, real-time tracking indicates that Aleksander Doba is on or near the small French Island of Ushant on the south-western end of the English Channel. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border.