Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 2020 wasn’t enough for Edinburgh brothers Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan MacLean. Later this year, they plan to cover around three times the distance and row the Pacific.
Setting sail from Lima, Peru, around the start of April – weather dependent – the brothers will attempt to become the first trio to reach Sydney via human-powered vessel – unsupported and without stopping, all in the name of charity as they look to raise £1million for clean water projects under the MacLean Foundation.
With around 70kilograms of porridge to fuel them in the morning and over 2,000 meals – mostly freeze dried home cooked meals – as well as a multi-million pound craft, the MacLeans are pulling out all the stops as they attempt to create history.
Along the way, they will face numerous challenges including typhoons, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, sharks and the threat of marlins. But for the trio, there’s no better feeling than tackling these mammoth challenges with their – quite literal – brothers in arms.
‘As kids, we used to beat the s*** out of each other,’ says Ewan. ‘Lachlan is a bit younger, he’s got amazing grip strength, but Jamie and I had this swing in the garden and we used to peg him up on that. We were terrible. But that’s just boys growing up.
‘I think we’ve always had similar interests in sport, always got on in a lot of ways and we might not have felt any different from any other siblings.
Jamie, Lachlan and Ewan arrive at the finish point for their 2020 Atlantic sail
The brothers helped design the new boat for their latest challenge with teams from around Europe
‘There was a point, before the Atlantic, where I was working down south just outside Bristol, Jamie at university, Lachlan in Edinburgh, and I felt that I was only seeing them once or twice throughout the year. So the Atlantic gave us the chance to do a project together.
‘It’s an all-encompassing, great adventure for so many reasons. But you have to put your heart and soul into it for a long time before you actually get on the oars. It’s working together to do things like this, working with our partners, forming those relationships, the training, being in it all together and it’s certainly brought us together.
‘It’s a benefit that there’s the three of us. We just take a majority vote and we’re very good at just saying: “two of us want to do that, so that’s what we’re doing”.’
While the brothers are separated by six years from oldest to youngest, Lachlan adds that there is no one else he would rather cross any ocean with, saying: ‘We’ve all got our own close friends, I’ve got one that I like to do cycle tours with. But ocean rowing is so unique. The social element is probably the most intense part.
‘The boat is only 30ft long, so you’re in such close quarters so you really have to know that you can be on this thing together and get through it. Having that non-abrasive, being able to crack on, attitude is key.’
Now set for their second ocean crossing, the trio learned numerous lessons from that Atlantic voyage that they’re able to put into practice this time around.
Using the same technology used in the construction of Formula 1 cars and jet wings, a lot of thought – and money – has gone into creating the carbon fibre vessel that is going to be the brothers’ home for, hopefully, approximately four months.
The new boat will weigh around 280kg on its own – less than half of the old craft
Ewan, a former engineer with Dyson, explains: ‘It’s a full carbon fibre boat, where the hull was produced by a top-end sail racing manufacturer in Germany, then that was shipped to the Netherlands and then we went out and helped attach the row deck to the rest of the boat.
‘The last boat was just over a tonne unladen. Obviously, we were carrying a lot less for that voyage (over the Atlantic), for 50-60 days worth of food.
‘We’re preparing for 150 days+ this time but this boat is only about 280kg. So it’s very lightweight but because of the manufacturing process, where they make the sections in these huge, pressurised ovens, where you can basically force together the layers of carbon in a way that you wouldn’t be able to do at room temperature. It means that it’s very, very strong and very light.’
While many observers will be aware of challenges and dangers including typhoons and sharks, one of the less obvious tasks the brothers will have to tackle are barnacles forming on the hull of their craft.
To avoid this, they anticipate having to go overboard every seven to ten days and use a ‘giant windscreen wiper’ to clean these off and allow for maximum speed.
For Jamie, one particular thing comes to mind. He says: ‘We did it (cleaning) twice in the Atlantic because we only got the conditions a couple of times for it. It’s very disconcerting. You see sharks going around the boat; we saw a couple that were quite big. You get in the water and all you can hear in your head is the Jaws theme tune as you’re trying to scrape off these barnacles.
‘The Pacific is known for having a lot more species of sharks as well, there’s certainly Great Whites and Hammerheads, so we’re going to have that to think about.’
Not only will there be barnacles living on the hull of the boat, small fish following in the slipstream also bring the additional threat of marlins.
There have been instances recorded with these predatory fish spearing boats in the past, but the MacLeans have taken the added precaution of a Kevlar mat on the floor of their sleeping cabins to ensure that there are no emergencies.
The brothers admit that they couldn’t envisage doing this challenge with anyone else
‘The danger from marlins is quite common,’ says Ewan. ‘The marlins are trying to spear small fish that gather underneath and they end up going right through the boat.
‘In the year we did the Atlantic, there was a team where one of the guys was sleeping and a marlin’s tusk came straight through between his legs and that could have been fatal. Fibreglass is going to be a bit less impervious to a marlin strike. In critical areas on the boat, we have thicker parts of carbon so we shouldn’t see a fish being able to penetrate through that.
‘But in the cabins, we have a double layer, so it’s four layers of carbon with a 10cm cavity so we shouldn’t see any marlins getting through to us. But we’re looking at a Kevlar mat, so that even if it did get through those layers there’s that extra bit of resistance.’
At the heart of everything is raising money for clean water projects and completing this latest challenge safely.
With choppier waters predicted, the brothers have undertaken capsize training in different conditions to ensure they’re equipped to handle such an event should it occur.
Lachlan, though, hints that the biggest lesson he took from the Atlantic row was the mentality required to complete the challenge at hand. No matter how strong the bond is, relationships are tested in the open sea.
‘There’s been a few lessons from that first trip,’ he says. ‘A lot of teams do these trips and there’s a lot of fallings-out. There’s been some horrendous stories – there was once this pair that did the Atlantic crossing and, mid-ocean as an example of sleep deprivation making your decision making terrible, one of them told the other one that he’d been having an affair with his wife.
On their Atlantic voyage, the MacLeans used musical instruments to help pass the time and with morale
‘Coming out of the last one, it clarified to us how important it is to have that shared goal in terms of the team dynamic is. How important it is to have an aligned understanding of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, what the priorities are.
‘This one, for us, No1 is making it to the other side safely. Safety is the most important thing to us. Second to that is raising £1million for clean water projects. So all the decisions we’ve made about the crossing, those are our guiding principles.
‘We’d love to do this as just peace and quiet, you and the stars, the whales, 150 days of no connection to anyone. But because our priority is fundraising, sharing the story as much as we can is really, really important. We’ve got a starlink, cameras, drone, two DSLRs, so we’ll be creating as much media as we can to hopefully help us hit our target.’
Jamie adds: ‘We are best mates. We trust each other more than we trust any one else and that’s incredibly important when your life quite literally depends on it. Even just wanting to spend 150 days with people, you need to get on pretty well.’
