Adventures at Sea - Three Brothers in a Boat

Who came up with the idea of the three of you rowing 9,000 miles in a small boat?

The Pacific was a joint effort, but the Atlantic idea was mine. I saw an ad for the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge and was drawn to it. We'd spent a lot of our childhoods in the northwest of Scotland, and I think all of us shared a childhood dream of casting off into the Minch, rowing west, imagining there were no Outer Hebrides to hit, and eventually reaching another landmass somewhere in North America.

I was talking about doing the Atlantic with a mate when Jamie and Ewan found out about it. My mate wasn't serious, so we started talking about it instead, and it snowballed from there.

Fast forward to the Pacific: we all wanted to do another big trip centred on fundraising. We discussed building a tricycle and cycling around the planet, and doing the Indian Ocean. Eventually, we looked at a globe, turned it slightly anticlockwise from the Atlantic, and there was the Pacific: a vast body of ocean, about three times the length of the Atlantic, equivalent to going halfway around the planet, roughly six months at sea. It was so big and overwhelming that we shelved the idea - but it had lodged itself in our imaginations. Six months later we were seriously considering it, and it became the idea we couldn't shake. So, we decided to give it a bash.

Why were you inspired to raise money for clean water projects in Madagascar?

We started fundraising for clean water in Madagascar during our Atlantic row - about £120,000 of what we raised went toward boreholes. That came off the back of a backpacking trip I took to Madagascar in 2018, between my first and second year at university, where I came across Feedback Madagascar, a small NGO doing development and conservation work in rural communities in the southeast of the country.

We raised the money through the Atlantic row, but because of COVID lockdowns, it was a couple of years before we actually went out and saw the projects we'd funded. That trip was the turning point: we visited communities with a borehole and communities without one, and saw the stark difference in people's lives. Clean water is foundational to any form of development - before you can think about health, education, or conservation, etc. Communities need clean water. That's why we made it the core focus for the Pacific campaign.

What were some of the most memorable moments?

Some weren't memorable for positive reasons - going overboard is etched into my brain. Generally speaking, it's remarkable how the brain erases negative experiences; we realised that writing the book, going back through our logs. There were weeks of bad weather near the end that none of us could really remember until we relived them in the writing process.

But there were plenty of positive moments too. After the Marquesas, we'd had beamy conditions for much of the first half of the crossing, then the wind finally came round into the east, driving us west, and we had about twenty days of light but favourable winds. There was something special about that window. Celtic wisdom talks about "thin places" - where the veil between this world and the next grows thinner - and I believe that was true there. There was something unusual in the light. We were about as isolated as you can be on the planet, in the middle of the Pacific, and that disconnection made us feel deeply connected - to ourselves, to each other, and to our boat, Rose Emily. It was a beautiful stretch of the crossing.

Do you have another joint project planned?

We do. The boat's currently in the northwest of Scotland, and we recently crossed the Minch to the Outer Hebrides. While training for the Pacific, we tried to cross the Minch and failed - friends and family were, understandably, concerned about whether we were ready. The Minch can be a cruel mistress, but we finally made it across a couple of weeks ago.

Getting to St Kilda is a real bucket-list goal - a row of forty to sixty miles from the nearest islands, the shortest crossing being about forty. I've only been there once, by sailing boat, but never rowed. It would take a serious weather window, since conditions out there can turn wild even in summer. We're also working on something else in the background, but we're not ready to announce it yet.

What can the audience expect from your event in Wigtown?

A relaxed conversation about the book, with stories from the crossing. The book's backbone is the daily log we kept at sea - we tried to keep it as raw and unreflective as possible, because nothing written afterward could match that honest, in-the-moment account. Expect a relaxed, hopefully entertaining chat between the three of us, some video and slides, and a great questioner keeping us honest.

You can buy tickets for The Maclean Brothers' event on 25 September on our website.