Three brothers to embark on huge 14,000 mile ocean row with a ukulele and bagpipes
Three Scottish brothers are aiming to raise £1 million for clean water projects by rowing 14,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean next year.
The MacLean brothers will be embarking on the mammoth crossing from Peru to Australia in May 2025. If they manage it, the trio will be the first team in history to cross the Pacific Ocean non-stop and unsupported.
The Scots will also be aiming to break the world record for the fastest human-powered crossing of the Pacific Ocean.
‘Raising money for clean water projects is the focus of this row,’ said Ewan, the eldest brother at 32.
‘We raised over £200,000 with the first row and that was really our first experience of fundraising for a good cause and I think that’s become such a motivation for the three of us.
‘Having gone out to Madagascar and seen the difference clean water makes to people’s lives, we want to raise £1 million this time. That would be the equivalent of providing 30,000 people with clean water.’
Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan became the first three brothers to row any ocean and the youngest and fastest trio to row the Atlantic when they crossed from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean in December 2019.
It took BROAR, the collective name the brothers go by, 35 days to row the 3,000-mile Atlantic Ocean. 2025’s Pacific Ocean crossing will see them attempt to row a whopping 14,000 miles however.
The brothers are working with multisport athlete Chloe Lanthier, who has trained with Paris Saint-German and Rafael Nadal in the past, to prepare them for the monster voyage.
‘The training volume has increased this time around, given we’re rowing so much further,’ said Ewan.
‘We’re spending around 30 hours a week in the boat and we’re still months away from the crossing. We’re doing five or six hours rowing on the erg, as well as plenty of cycling and uphill sprinting. It’s really intense.’
The Atlantic crossing saw BROAR battle intense seasickness, dehydration and exhaustion as they rowed through shark-infested waters to reach Antigua.
‘The first thing we had to overcome was the fear of the unknown,’ said Ewan.
‘You really don’t know how your body is going to react to the lack of sleep, the sea and the intense exercise. We were sleeping for four hours a night and rowing for 16.
‘I remember during the first night at sea, the conditions were so intense, the winds were swirling and the waves were crashing. Myself and Jamie had such bad seasickness, I remember both of us had been sick and we looked at each other and said: ‘What have we signed up for? This is going to be horrendous.’
As they neared the end of the crossing, the brothers experienced extreme blisters on their hands and feet after rowing for almost 30 days.
‘We sort of let go of our maintenance of our hands and feet as we got closer to the end. You know, keeping the salts off and looking after the blisters,’ Ewan said.
‘It was weird, at that point your body is just in this state of survival. You get a blister and it doesn’t heal because all your energy is going into the crossing.
‘By the end my hands and feet were just covered in blisters.
‘When we reached Antigua, we had been at sea for so long that we experienced land sickness. Everything was swaying, it was like we were drunk!’
The brothers will be bringing bagpipes, ukulele and a harmonica on the Pacific crossing to try and boost morale, just as they did across the Atlantic.
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