05/06/2025
unbelievable achievements that you could accomplish if you put your mind and heart to it, that’s all it takes. 
Bronzed, bearded and sinewy, Polish grandfather Aleksander Doba paddled across the Atlantic three times, and he did it all in his seventh decade. The first expedition was from Senegal to Brazil over 99 days in 2011, the second from Portugal to Florida over 167 days in 2014, and finally from New Jersey to France over 110 days in 2017, at the age of 70.
“On the first expedition, I faced more than 50 tropical storms; otherwise, it was pretty quiet. The second crossing was more than twice as long and much more difficult. I lost communication for 47 days. I was plagued by strong winds that trapped me for 40 nights in the Bermuda Triangle. Then a storm broke the kayak’s rudder,” Doba told Paddling Magazine in 2014. On the same voyage, his desalinator broke, forcing him to hand pump water four hours a day.
Things often didn’t go according to plan on Doba’s expeditions. Repairs required all his ingenuity as a retired mechanical engineer. Storms blew him all over, but often backward. Saltwater, heat and humidity irritated his skin, so he sometimes paddled naked. His 23-foot-long, self-righting kayak weighed nearly 1,500 pounds when loaded with supplies and required Doba to sleep in a fetal position in the boat’s airtight cabin, which he affectionately called the casket.
Storms were frequent and Doba often faced waves over 21 feet high. But he was joyful for the adventure, fearful of being “an average old man with nothing going on.” Living life to the fullest until the very end, Doba died on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 74 in 2021.
Read about the Greatest Kayaking Expeditions of the century... so far: https://bit.ly/4716nu6
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