aleksander doba kayak design

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. Kind, gracious, enthusiastic Poles kept bringing me shots of alcohol, which I tried to wave off. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired . Then he sat down and fell asleep.. Doba declined the ropes the crew offered to throw him. Then I saw it: a huge head, sticking out of the ocean, he told Canoe & Kayak magazine in 2014. It looks straight out of a dystopian young-adult novel in which the state is intent on creating little gray men. I am not German always 9 a.m. paddle, he explained. A former chemical plant engineer who lived in a little river town, Mr. Doba had long been the most accomplished kayaker in his country. The majority of His body appears to be assembled from parts belonging to people of vastly different ages. 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. I did not think I could find myself in something so downing, he texted to Chmielinski, somewhat incomprehensibly, two weeks later. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Doba told me when I met him in Poland in January. He once became convinced that someone was watching him. [7] 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. A Record-Breaking Atlantic Crossing by Kayak. He knew that the kayak needed to be unsinkable, as well as self-righting, in the event that it capsized, and that it needed lockers to store food and a cabin in which to sleep. He had always planned to go on three crossings: South, Mid- and North Atlantic. Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic solo by the longest route, unaided and without a sail. He refused. After breaking off those wings, it took me only a few seconds to adjust and start to enjoy such an unexpected improvement of my kayak, says Doba. People stopped him on the street to take selfies. A crisis, in Dobas worldview, is an opportunity for triumph. When he was too far from shore to see any birds, Doba was surrounded instead by marine wildlife, from fish and dolphins to turtles, whales, and sharks. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. His first crossing was in 2011, from Senegal, West Africa, to Brazil, a 99-day journey. Here, Fiann Paul from the Ocean Rowing Society International remembers this most accomplished of adventurers. Everyone who cared about Doba opposed his third expedition the cold and stormy North Atlantic, from New Jersey to France. Then I asked the local guides with him, Do you know who this man is? And they said: Yes. 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. So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. A documentary about the life of Aleksander Doba entitled Happy Olo was released in 2017. I was just paddling down the river, he explained. Doba does not regret this experience. The devil says, It means that life is meaningless but when you jump you will look very chic, very modern. So the Frenchman jumps. Aleksander Doba is a Polish traveler and explorer. Doba was a little disappointed. (Doba doesnt speak much English, so we communicated through a translator.) 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. In photos from the ends of his trips, he looks ecstatic and feral, in the best possible sense, intrinsically wild and free. Doba and his wife, Gabriela, at home in Police. Even in seemingly reasonable conditions, rogue waves can cause havoc. The idea was to do the crossing unsupported. He was, by then, 90 percent of the way across the ocean but had spent the last six weeks paddling in circles in the Bermuda Triangle, trapped by wind and currents. Bigger than the Atlantic! Doba chimed in. It was in 2010 that he started seriously planning to cross the Atlantic. Three times, he paddled 200 to 300 miles, only to get pushed back by the winds and currents. Today. Doba alerted Chmielinski, who alerted Gabriela who didnt really want to know anything about how the trip was going. From what we gather, he was euphoric to reach the summit. A freighter picked him up, and its Filipino crew repaired the rudder. Arminski, the boatbuilder, spent many hours trying to argue Doba out of it. I even do oceanic expeditions as a tourist. He took us on long trips, only him and us both, in the middle of nowhere, and we hated that, Bartek recalled. 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. 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. He was named 2015 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. Several books have been written about his adventures, including three written by Doba himself.[21]. His father built him a bicycle from scrap parts, and when he was 15 he rode it across the country. 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. And a tourist does not prepare himself too much. When Doba finally said, I will go on the North Atlantic, I said, I will not participate in this, Arminski told me. During the third rescue attempt he yelled a Polish vulgarity. Sometimes he took his young sons, Bartek and Czesiek, born in 1979 and 1982. To go into the sea and die that would be a problem for my family and a problem for Andrzej Arminski, too, Doba acknowledged. 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. Doba was blown to the beach and called the trip off. He was named 2014 Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic. A week later, three bandits went through my stuff for half an hour. In video footage of the hour before he left, Doba looks wrecked exhausted and on the verge of tears. He crossed the ocean three different times in one of these and spent several months completely alone. Many things can go wrong while at sea, and if something does go wrong, help can be . His pension is $700 a month. As he braced for his life, the rope tethering his sea anchor (the only thing keeping his kayak stable) broke off. Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. Adventurer of 2015 ! By choosing it, he casts himself in the role of hero, not victim. All rights reserved. It is simply too dangerous. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. Heres the technology that helped scientists find itand what it may have been used for. 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. We watched them in his living room together with Gabriela. This would have been Doba's third transatlantic crossing. Polish adventurer Aleksander "Olek" Doba paddles across the Atlantic by Kayak from Lisbon, Portugal to New Smyrna Beach in Florida:. He went on to win the gold medal at the Open Academic Polish Championships in Whitewater Kayaking in 2003 at age 57 and defended the title the next year. Aboard Baltic Light, he ate a hot meal and took a bunch of selfies with the Filipino crew. (That didnt work.) 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. How did he justify it to himself? 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. (Very fine, he said. Trans Atlantic kayak completed by Aleksander Doba. One year during the kayaking convention, Doba giddily reported, It was minus 18 degrees, and the number of people who showed up was the same!. Navigating OLO was much more difficult than a usual kayak. Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. An early escapade involved kayaking on the Baltic Sea at a time when the Communist Party, to discourage defectors, had declared it illegal. In 1989, he spent 108 days on the . He was at sea for 110 consecutive days. Even here at home, Dobas physicality is sui generis. 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. The Greeks got the message and left. Aleksander Doba, 68 years old is the first to complete the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic. 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. With a long grey beard, a big smile on the face and the looks of a pensioner on holiday, Aleksander Doba didn . He kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean three times, the last time in 2017, when he was 70. After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his . He then reached Acara at 17:50 local time (99 days, 6 h, 20 min). . This is a matter of the size and energy of the wave compared to the mass of the kayak. Beyond the boat rolling over, there is an even more catastrophic problem: A breaking wave transfers all the potential energy in the waves height into turbulent, violent kinetic energy. In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across . He said it because he has reimagined the concept of crisis, just as he has reimagined the concept of suffering. 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. The biggest piece of junk floating in the water was a shattered, plastic 200-liter trash barrel. He wanted to tough out his original plan. Before the second expedition, there were similarly heavy struggles between us. National Geographic . Three days in, Doba received his first storm warning. He lost 14kg in 14 weeks of the journey. After his salt-water-drenched clothes became too irritating, he navigated the rest of his trip buck naked. 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. He put on a clean red-and-white shirt, the colors of the Polish flag, and lay down on the grass. 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. Dobas goal was to go continent to continent between the mainlands, from Senegal to Brazil, unsupported. (Honestly, you dont need the details.) Still, Doba refused. 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. His maternal grandmother was sent to Siberia. In 2013, when he paddled from Portugal to Florida, a Greek tanker made the mistake of trying to rescue him. Nie chce byc malym szarym czlowiekiem, he told me. 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. "Video: People's Choice Adventurer of the Year Aleksander Doba", "Aleksander Doba Completes His Third Atlantic Crossing in a Kayak", "Police. Previous generations had not fared better. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world but to mainstream audiences when he kayaked across the Atlantic in . Even with a sleek kayak I get exhausted on 20K paddles. Kayaking is an absurd form of long-distance ocean travel. It is basically an avalanche of water. He was a few days shy of his 71st birthday. Before he arrived in France, he made a few GoPro videos. His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. Recently, just before his 71 st birthday, he sailed single-handed across the Atlantic for the third time in his kayak. During the trip, he struggled against storms; his rudder was damaged and had to be repaired by sailors from a merchant vessel. Doba describes the tedium as a form of dementia: Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of repetitions. He was 74. [2] A Polish adventurer who crossed the Atlantic three times by kayak unaided has died climbing Kilimanjaro, his family said on Tuesday. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. He woke up on shore to the sound of screaming his own. He did it three times, setting records and becoming a national hero in Poland. An ocean crossing is not something to undertake lightly. Id never seen him like that. Her last article for the magazine was about a Chinese mafia don. 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. While it was not the first transatlantic kayak crossing in history, Doba was the first one to travel this way from continent to continent and not island to island. He explored countless Polish rivers, and he amassed records and firsts. (He ate all the meat options first.) The Pole has announced that he will set off in May on what will be his third - and possibly toughest - Atlantic Crossing. He kept chasing adventure. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Agence France-Presse Getty Images, Mr. Doba once said that his hunger to cross the Atlantic was not really his idea. So the devil says to the German man: You must jump. Dobas apartment building is a five-story cube of blank concrete, with blank concrete stairwells. Ocean kayaking is catastrophically monotonous. I consider myself to be a tourist, he explains. 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. Daily News. I do not want to be a little gray man. This is a common expression in Poland and a good motto for us all. When a few landed on my kayak, I didnt have to eat my lyophilized food for dinner that night.. 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. 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.) Gabriela, she says, was to be honest, a little pissed that Doba was going again. Once he got far enough out from the shore, he spent most of the trip naked, deciding it was more comfortable. 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 . Rather, he said, I was infected with a virus.. 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. 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. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. In October 2010, Doba voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean by kayak, from Senegal to Brazil and completed his trip in February 2011. A normal person wants to sit by the fire with their family for Christmas, his son added. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great kayaker Alesander Doba on February 22. Doba signed up for the factory kayaking trip and went again the following year. I wished him luck in reaching the summit, Mr. Wawrzyniak said in a phone interview. Along the way, he was thrown from his kayak in a storm. With my hand on my heart, it wasnt my idea, Mr. Doba told The New York Times Magazine in 2018. No retired man in Poland can afford to do these things, Doba explained. Four days later, after capsizing repeatedly, Doba finally cleared the Sandy Hook peninsula and left lower New York Bay. He said many times that he didnt want to die in his bed, his son said. But Mr. Doba hungered to cross an ocean so vast that it seemed infinite, and he began plotting to kayak the Atlantic. He spent 40 unplanned days and nights wrestling with unfavorable winds and currents that sent him paddling in circles around the notorious Bermuda Triangle. Aleksander Doba: On both routes, I saw floating garbage close to the coasts of Africa and Europe. Do you know how fast they go? he said. . He playfully tapped the shells of turtles that swam alongside him. These skeletons may have the answer, Scientists are making advancements in birth controlfor men, Blood cleaning? Then there is [the] satisfaction of great achievements.. 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. Dobas stinking foam sleeping pad and other gear from Olo remain, at Gabrielas request, all these months later, on the balcony. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great . He witnessed the formation of storm clouds and the deafening calm that accompanied them. The trip could have easily ended five days earlier, when Doba was just a few hundred feet off the British coast. But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. 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. When he arrived in Brazil he weighed 64kg. He drank five cups a day of instant coffee. I did not see oil slicks and there were not large amounts of trash, just single pieces of rubbish. (This did work, in that Doba managed to drill the holes, but he couldnt steer.) After more than three months of paddling, a Polish adventure junkie has crossed the Atlantic in a 23 foot custom kayak. Aleksander Doba is no stranger to long ocean crossings. This time he would paddle from west to east, from New York to Lisbon where he would celebrate his 70th birthday after having spent . Please be respectful of copyright. My phone exploded with hysterical texts from home. Brent Stirton/Getty Images, for The New York Times, Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times. [15][16] He has also jumped 14 times with parachute, piloted gliders for a total of 250 hours, and practiced cycling. Sean Dudley. End of the expedition F. Pinterest. Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba begins his translatlantic kayak adventure from New York to Lisbon on May 29, 2016 in New York. Aleksander Doba (born 9 September 1946) is a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. Doba was ready, Chmielinski suspected, to just drift off into the eternal vastness and go down with his ship. Doba responded, In that case, Ill be on my way.. Gabriela did not believe he would. Bright green moss covered the trees, egrets stretched like sheets blowing on a line and the occasional ray of sun broke through the low clouds. This story is one of four extraordinary journeys published in the magazine's Voyages issue.Read the rest here: Doba had only wanted his phone repaired. [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. 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. Ninety-nine days after leaving Senegal, Doba arrived in Brazil. X Hed been at sea 110 days, alone, having last touched land that May at New Jerseys Barnegat Bay. I have two sons and two granddaughters. And yet Doba describes his youth as magical, almost fantastical. 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. Polish long distance kayaker Aleksander Doba was planning to set off to attempt an Atlantic Ocean crossing alone at the age of 69 years. After, on weekends Doba would put a kayak on a train, debark as close to a river as possible and walk the kayak, on a wheeled contraption built from bicycle and stroller parts, 25 miles if necessary to put in. With this design the paddler sits up off the water as well. Chmielinski and others came up with what Doba describes as exotic and expensive methods of rescue. At age 64, after 42 years of marriage, she still adores Doba, and her acceptance of him is absolute easier than it used to be, in fact. 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. 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 . I dont know how I ended up here.. *Oficjalny fanpage Aleksandra Doby. Then the devil gets to the Polish man. He tries the reasons he used on the German and French men, without success. The whale swam here, and there, all around my kayak. The whole nation was starving. Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. 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. 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. 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. 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. He hungered to paddle across an ocean so vast it seemed infinite. In mid-September 2013, Doba still did not possess all the gear he wanted to take on his trip. 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. 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. As a young man in Communist Poland, he had joined a local kayaking club, and he took to the sport avidly. AD: Before the first Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, my wife tried very hard to make me drop such an idea. 02/23/21 AT 12:35 PM. 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. Gabriela traveled to Denmark to study how European Union countries handled problems like unemployment, alcoholism and lonely young mothers. At 67 years old, a Polish kayaker completes the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic in history. Along with jars of his wifes plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars and homemade wine. 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 realized almost immediately that an ordinary kayak can't handle the open . The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. 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.. Juan Villarino waits for a ride in the Namibian desert. [20] In 2019 he participated in the Polish version of "The Mole" (Agent Gwiazdy), he was eliminated in the 3rd episode and came in 11th. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. 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. Anyone can read what you share. Sketch in hand, Doba drove from Police to Szczecin, the regional capital, and approached a yacht-builder named Andrzej Arminski. Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. I am only 67 years young! Can we bring a species back from the brink? 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. Joakim Eskildsen is a Danish photographer based outside Berlin. Shoot, the devil says. [5][6], Doba's first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was from Senegal to Brazil in 2010 and spanned 5394 kilometers. After a while, the boys began to mutiny. Physically, Doba did not seem to experience any difficulty beyond some uncomfortable and persistent skin rashes caused by prolonged exposure to saltwater. . When people are young, sometimes they are very jealous, she said, and want to keep a piece of their partner for themselves. These animals can sniff it out. Corley, Apr 21, 2014, in forum: All Things Boats & Boating. His mother, Eugenia (Ilijna) Doba, was a homemaker. Aleksander Doba (9 September 1946 - 22 February 2021) was a Polish kayaker and mountain climber. That October, he paddled from Senegal to Brazil in 99 days. I am Polish. 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. He died like an adventurer after . These involved such things as catamarans sailing in from the Bahamas and helicopters dropping rudder-repair gift packages out of the sky. He did have a satellite phone, and he texted with Arminski, who, as his trip navigator, sent a regular forecast for wind and weather.