Polish kayaker calls off transatlantic trip

Close to the peninsula of Sandy Hook near New York, he saw a wave approaching to his left at 1am on Thursday.

“It wasn’t very big”, Doba recounted, as cited by a friend. “Maybe one metre high, but it was growing rapidly. In a moment, it struck the kayak, causing it to capsize.

“After that came the next wave and it turned my kayak over again. In the first wave I fell off the kayak, the second was pounding at me [when I was] already under the boat.”

Doba escaped uninjured and initially hoped he would be able to resume his voyage after repairing several damaged pieces of equipment. But that proved impossible.

He has already hinted he could make another attempt to cross the Atlantic next year.

Doba had been hoping to reach Porto in Portugal on 9 September, the day of his 70th birthday.

Doba has a number of hazardous trips under his belt. In 2010, it took him 98 days to paddle from Dakar in Senegal to Acarau in Brazil.

In October 2013, he set off from Lisbon, hoping to paddle 5,400 miles across the Atlantic's widest point and arrive in Florida in February 2014.

But due to storms and equipment failure, he had to sail an additional 1,300 miles and finished his journey in mid-April, after 167 days.

It was the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic in history, and earned Doba the 2015 People’s Choice Adventurer of the Year title from National Geographic magazine. (mk/pk)