All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. Aleksander Doba died at Kilimanjaro | by Polish Herald in the UK - Medium So he stayed on the water nearly another week, in the one-meter-wide boat where hed endured towering waves, in the coffinlike cabin where he spent almost four months not sleeping more than three hours at a stretch, where he severely tried his loved ones patience in order to be lonely, naked and afraid. So I thought: Well, he might not come back.. Transatlantic Crossing - Encyclopedia Information So, Gabriela told me, she laid out for her husband all the reasons trans-Atlantic kayaking was stupid. A National Geographic team has made the first ascent of the remote Mount Michael, looking for a lava lake in the volcanos crater. Photo: Wikipedia. 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. Along with jars of his wife's plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars . He took us on long trips, only him and us both, in the middle of nowhere, and we hated that, Bartek recalled. Recently, just before his 71 st birthday, he sailed single-handed across the Atlantic for the third time in his kayak. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean. A normal person wants to sit by the fire with their family for Christmas, his son added. I did not think I could find myself in something so downing, he texted to Chmielinski, somewhat incomprehensibly, two weeks later. It felt good. Sketch in hand, Doba drove from Police to Szczecin, the regional capital, and approached a yacht-builder named Andrzej Arminski. Aleksander Doba. He has kayaked solo across the Atlantic 3 - reddit The weather was disgusting humid and hot. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. The air that day hovered around 40 degrees about 4 degrees Celsius. "Video: People's Choice Adventurer of the Year Aleksander Doba", "Aleksander Doba Completes His Third Atlantic Crossing in a Kayak", "Police. Bigger than the Atlantic! Doba chimed in. 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. Doba responded, In that case, Ill be on my way.. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [4][17] With his wife Gabriela he had two sons: Bartomiej and Czesaw. He was happy to see his friends, team and the warm Welcome of the Bretons. AD: When I packed things carefully and ate some food, I could lie down on my back. My flu lingered. But. I do not want to be a little gray man. This is a common expression in Poland and a good motto for us all. He spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. Isolation? Meet the man who solo kayaked the Atlantic Ocean What most of us experience as suffering he repurposes as contrarian self-determination, and that gives him an existential thrill. He gives himself control. Sea kayaks are seaworthy small boats with a covered deck and the ability to incorporate a spray deck.They trade off the manoeuvrability of whitewater kayaks for higher cruising speed, cargo capacity, ease of straight-line paddling, and comfort for long journeys. He is a family man, whose positive attitude to life is contagious. He witnessed the formation of storm clouds and the deafening calm that accompanied them. 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 . He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. He then sat down on a rock and "just fell asleep".[19]. The more you dont believe in Polish people, the more determined we are. 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. Once he got far enough out from the shore, he spent most of the trip naked, deciding it was more comfortable. Doba maintains that his need to cross the Atlantic in a kayak did not originate within him. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. The Daily: The Sunday Read: 'Alone at Sea' on Apple Podcasts . With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Mr. Doba told The New York Times Magazine in 2018. 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). 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. Aleksander Doba Wikipedia Republished // WIKI 2 The Daily. [4] He quickly started going on kayaking expeditions regularly. [2] Pensioner, 70, paddles across Atlantic Ocean in kayak for the third But this trip felt different. Sean Dudley. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great . I even do oceanic expeditions as a tourist. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic . Hed been at sea 110 days, alone, having last touched land that May at New Jerseys Barnegat Bay. 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. 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. Aleksander Doba (9 September 1946 22 February 2021) was a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. 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 departure for the second trip, from Portugal to Florida, turned out to be very abrupt. He once became convinced that someone was watching him. The 70-year-old who kayaked the Atlantic - The Knowledge He tried to drill holes in the rudder and attach the rudder to the stern with plastic ties. (Leaving shore is one of the trickiest parts of a trans-Atlantic journey.) Water trapped in Olos storage lockers short-circuited the electric desalinator. After clearing Barnegat Bay and heading for the horizon, he was soon a floating blip in the ocean. Transatlantic passenger crossings became faster, safer, and more reliable with the advent of steamships in the 19th century. Aleksander Doba, a Polish adventurer who set out six months ago to cross the Atlantic in a 21-foot kayak, pulled into Port Canaveral in Florida on Thursday night, looking like a castaway. He has no interest in dying in his bed. The Pole has announced that he will set off in May on what will be his third - and possibly toughest - Atlantic Crossing. 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. He arrived at New Smyrna Beach, Florida on April 19, 2014. [3], Doba first tried kayaking at age 34 on a trip organised by the company he was working for. This site is to promote polish paddler Aleksander Doba and his highly respectable . He explored countless Polish rivers, and he amassed records and firsts. I never expected it would be so big, she said. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. This was his second crossing, and he estimates that, due to his drift in currents, he paddled some 7,000 miles - this from a 67 year old man sporting a long, grey beard. [5][6], Doba's first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was from Senegal to Brazil in 2010 and spanned 5394 kilometers. Navigating OLO was much more difficult than a usual kayak. Before the Iron Curtain fell, the Communist Party declared it illegal to kayak on the Baltic Sea, lest anyone defect. End of the expedition Aleksander Doba - Transatlantic Kayak Expedition - YouTube With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Doba told me when I met him in Poland in January. She did not want to spend her life stressed, waiting for his return. He had been taking long trips for decades, but he always slept on land. Kayak legend Aleksander Doba (74 years) Dies on Kilimanjaro Summit. His mean speed was 2.26km/h, and he averaged 54km per 24 hours, with a maximum 24hour distance of 126.5km. I was not in a great state. He relieved himself by leaning off the side or the stern. One day, a colleague of Dobas said the factorys kayaking club was going on a two-week expedition. Heres why each season begins twice. My attempt to get out of this terrible conflict was a signal strike. Doba then turned off all his communications, including his SPOT device, which uploaded his coordinates every 10 minutes. Brent Stirton/Getty Images, for The New York Times, Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times. 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. He texted via satellite phone with his family and Arminski, the boat builder, who once again served as trip navigator, sending wind and weather reports. This is Gabis Pacific!, Later that afternoon, Bartek, the couples older son, stopped by the apartment with his two elementary-school-age daughters. 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. 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 . Her last article for the magazine was about a Chinese mafia don. 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. 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. ROZHOVOR: Olek Doba turista, kter tikrt pepdloval ocen What is wind chill, and how does it affect your body? These involved such things as catamarans sailing in from the Bahamas and helicopters dropping rudder-repair gift packages out of the sky. 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. Dec 20, 2019 - Polish adventurer and kayaker Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic by kayak a few days before turning 71 years old. [2], Doba has also paddled in a kayak with others around the Baltic Sea (in 1999, 80 days, 4227km), from Police to Narvik (in 2000, 101 days, 5369km) and around Lake Baikal (in 2009, 41 days, 2000km). 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 68 year-old mechanical engineer from the Polish city of Police, talked to Polska.pl about wind traps, the glistening . Better than sushi.). The World's Greatest Hitchhiker
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. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Doba flew back to Poland; returned to his hometown, Police, in the countrys northwest, where he had been managing maintenance and repairs at an enormous chemical factory; and swore off kayaking with a partner ever again. He was 74. You can be made small by life or rage against it. He slept no more than six hours a day in multiple installments, crammed into his cockpit on his side among five months' worth of food and equipment. Doba wasnt on a schedule. His hair and beard appear to be taken from a Michelangelo painting of God. Long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba is at it again. Three days in, Doba received his first storm warning. I am only 67 years young! Aleksander Doba, 68 years old is the first to complete the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic. After another storm, Olos rudder was seriously damaged, so he reluctantly contacted his team via satellite phone seeking help. The trip could have easily ended five days earlier, when Doba was just a few hundred feet off the British coast. Those were very, very hard times for both of us. I know you will not jump. And the Polish man jumps., Wojciechowska looked at me squarely, to make sure I understood. He kept no schedule. 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. After he graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering, Doba met Gabriela Stucka, his future wife, on a backpacking trip. Doba had been into hang gliding and sky diving, but the government often closed the airspace because Police was near the East German border. In video footage of the hour before he left, Doba looks wrecked exhausted and on the verge of tears. The 'extreme cruelty' around the global trade in frog legs, What does cancer smell like? I dont know how I ended up here.. I wished him luck in reaching the summit, Mr. Wawrzyniak said in a phone interview. 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. 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. His kayak,I rowed varsity crew in highschool and got into kayaking and poling in college. During his voyages he admired the majesty of the sea and relished wonders that he alone was privy to. He thought about his dead parents. When people are young, sometimes they are very jealous, she said, and want to keep a piece of their partner for themselves. 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. Alexander Doba returns to the Atlantic. 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. These animals can sniff it out. Subscribe. 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 refused. X After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his . AD: I'm not going to repeat paddling the Atlantic Ocean, but paddling something else maybe. Doba does not regret this experience. 2013Aleksander Doba67. Sometimes he took his young sons, Bartek and Czesiek, born in 1979 and 1982. Aleksander Doba on February 16, 2015 at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw, Poland. (That didnt work.) 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. They offered to throw him ropes. Dedham Kayak Company | Boat Design Net Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. He was at sea for 110 consecutive days. Touch device users, explore by touch or . 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. Nie chce byc malym szarym czlowiekiem, he told me. His maternal grandmother was sent to Siberia. 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. 33 Aleksander Doba Premium High Res Photos - Getty Images The kayak OLO was professionally designed and made in Andrzej Arminski shipyard located in Szczecin, Poland . Ocean kayaking is catastrophically monotonous. But this voyage was too dangerous, she told me, to keep her head where she liked it to be, stuck in the sand. Doba describes the tedium as a form of dementia: Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of repetitions. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. Here, Fiann Paul from the Ocean Rowing Society International remembers this most accomplished of adventurers. 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. 64-Year-Old Kayaker Completes Trans-Atlantic Voyage | WIRED But I dont have a film. But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired . 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. The huge group of his supporters keeps growing . Aleksander Doba dies on Kilimanjaro summit - Getaway Magazine The Polish . MARCH 22, 2018. 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. [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. 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. Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. [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. 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. I was not sure if they would leave me alive. In three weeks, Ill be 71, he says in one. I did it with no stuntman, Doba told me proudly. (This did work, in that Doba managed to drill the holes, but he couldnt steer.) And a tourist does not prepare himself too much. Doba started talking about his second trans-Atlantic trip a few days after he returned from the first. Raspberry vodka! Even here at home, Dobas physicality is sui generis. A freighter picked him up, and its Filipino crew repaired the rudder. The voyage took him 196 days to complete, and he paddled 6,300 miles. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired engineer with a thick white beard and a piercing gaze, was a popular figure in Poland. The ships captain was hesitant to let the disheveled man back into the ocean alone. Thus, most likely assuming that Doba was deranged he was, after all, a tiny speck bobbing in a vast universe of water the ship turned around and tried to rescue him again. Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. His pension is $700 a month. 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. Still, the trip was perfect. He lost 14kg in 14 weeks of the journey. So Doba moves toward the crisis, just as he moves toward the suffering. Dobas goal was to go continent to continent between the mainlands, from Senegal to Brazil, unsupported. He talks about his amazing adventures with passion and energy. Kayaking is an absurd form of long-distance ocean travel. He tried to fix it and failed. It was his 3rd crossing without a sail. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. On the island, after 143 days at sea, Doba could hardly walk, and by the time he was ready to return to the Atlantic, it was late March, and the weather was turning bad. That October, he paddled from Senegal to Brazil in 99 days. . Doba was ready, Chmielinski suspected, to just drift off into the eternal vastness and go down with his ship. kontakt: aleksanderdoba@gmail.com Still, Gabriela did not want to be Penelope to Dobas Odysseus. But Mr. Doba insisted, and he became a blip in the ocean all over again. Not according to biology or history. 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. 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. Corley, Apr 21, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating. Doba signed up for the factory kayaking trip and went again the following year. He studied the water closely. The trip was a fiasco. He did not say this because hes nave. 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. . But even if I did, censorship would not let it go., After a storm on June 16, 2017, Doba emerged from his cabin to find that the large pin that attached Olos rudder to the stern was seriously bent. Daily News. He started in Lisbon, Portugal on October 5th, 2013 and the goal was to arrive in Florida sailing 5,400 nautial miles. 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. He was greeted by one journalist and the Polish ambassador. F. Pinterest. 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. An early escapade involved kayaking on the Baltic Sea at a time when the Communist Party, to discourage defectors, had declared it illegal. When he saw shooting stars at night, he made wishes that, he said, later came true. Aleksander Doba, 70, completed his transatlantic journey on Sunday after setting off on the epic quest from New Jersey in May. 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 . Polish Adventurer Dies Atop Kilimanjaro: Family But Doba insisted. He has kayaked solo across the Atlantic 3 times, most recently in 2017 at the age of 70. . Then the devil gets to the Polish man. He tries the reasons he used on the German and French men, without success. 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) Only one person had ever crossed the Atlantic in a kayak using solely muscle power, and he traveled island to island, from Newfoundland to Ireland. 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. Its good?. The Olo, Doba's 2010 kayak. During the trip, he struggled against storms; his rudder was damaged and had to be repaired by sailors from a merchant vessel. Juan Villarino waits for a ride in the Namibian desert. When he gave me a last hug, maybe he didnt cry, but I saw his eyes, Bartek said. Anyone can read what you share. 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? MARCH 22, 2018. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer for the magazine. Three times, he paddled 200 to 300 miles, only to get pushed back by the winds and currents. In truth, my own trip had not been as peaceful as Id hoped. Eventually they found him a ride, and Doba paddled away during a storm. 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 . It is basically an avalanche of water. "Na szczycie Olek poprosi o 2 minuty przerwy, usiad na kamieniu i po prostu zasn", "Kayaker, 64, completes marathon paddle across Atlantic", "Landfall: Aleksander Doba reaches South America", "Kajakarstwo - Aleksander Doba przepyn Atlantyk", Unofficial blog for Aleksander Doba Transatlantic Kayak Crossing, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aleksander_Doba&oldid=1104141716, Recipients of the Order of Polonia Restituta, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 13 August 2022, at 00:00. His hands and forearms look 30, straight off a Montana roper. He intended to keep muscle tone in his legs by swimming, but he had to abort that plan because his body in the water attracted sharks. 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. 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. An expedition, he told me. Doba being helped by the crew of Baltic Light in June 2017, when he had rudder problems during his North Atlantic crossing. Aleksander Doba to Kayak Across the Atlantic Ocean | the Adventure Blog NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. How did this mountain lion reach an uninhabited island? 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. It was in 2010 that he started seriously planning to cross the Atlantic. AD: OLO is 23 feet long and three feet wide and weighs 1,100 pounds, and I used a nine-foot-long kayak paddle. All the big muscles in the body are useless. Adventure paddler Aleksander Doba willed his 71-year-old body and 1,600-pound kayak through a 4,000-mile trans-Atlantic journey For 110 days, Mr. Doba paddled eastward on his specially designed fiberglass kayak, Olo. Aleksander Doba is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. He spent 40 unplanned days and nights wrestling with unfavorable winds and currents that sent him paddling in circles around the notorious Bermuda Triangle.