🚣 EXCLUSIVE CHAT: The Maclean Brothers

The Maclean Brothers, the three brothers who rowed across two oceans with one mission: raising £1M for clean water projects, joins Jonesy & Amanda for a chat!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
My Heart podcasts here, more Gold one on one point
seven podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Playlists and listen live on the free iHeart app.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Jersey and Amanda Gama.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Our next guests are three brothers fresh from an extraordinary
journey on the high seas one hundred and thirty nine days.
It's four and a half months, covering pretty much fifteen
thousand kilometers, that is, traveling around the perimeter of Australia.
But they did this non stop rowing from Peru to Australia.
Their names Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan McLain. What an extraordinary

(00:45):
time they've had and they joined us. Now, Hello fellers,
Hello morning. What vessel were you on to be able
to do this?

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Well, So it's a very specialist kind of rowing boat.
It's got these two cabins, one either side, and then
there's kind of space for three rowing positions, and then
it's covered in solar panels. It's got a water maker,
it's got all the communications systems that you need for
doing this sort of thing. Yeah, it looks a bit weird.
It looks a bit like a kind of dolphin. Yeah,

(01:17):
it's quite a strange looking beast.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
And do you have to pay some sort of deposit
for that. What does the people say when you have
to bring it back because you've taken it for a
long time.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
No, it's it's we actually helped to build this boat.
So we were really fortunate to go out and work
with a guy out in the Netherlands who's a kind
of specialist ocean rowing boat builder and spent a couple
couple of weeks building this amazing vessel and.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
So non stop rowing. I can't imagine it. And I've
looked at the footage the high seas, the horror. They
were terrifying times, weren't there. Which one of you got
swept overboard one night?

Speaker 4 (01:52):
That was me? Yeah, so we got we got caught
up in an anti cyclone about two thirds of the
way through and on the kind of second night of
this storm, got washed overboard on a on a night shift.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Pretty scary, pretty scary.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
But fortunately Youwan was he was on the oars because
we were just going into the night shift. So the
nights generally will row with one up and then during
the day we'll all be up. So but yeah, fortunately
it was kind of on the transition from day and
to night you and kind of saw it happened the boat.
It was a knockdown, which is when the boat kind
of goes over in ninety degrees and then it comes

(02:26):
back up the same way. And then I was obviously
nowhere to be seen, so you and reacted pretty quick,
and yeah, gave me a hand getting back into the boat.
And it was all right.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Because I guess you'd never sleep.

Speaker 5 (02:38):
You get, you get broken sleep, so you crawl into
the cabins, which I mean half the cabin you have
to tuck under your feet under the road deck and
and understandably they're incredibly cramped and hot. You know, we
had we had so much food, so much food leading Peru.
We had bags of food on deck. The cabins were
stacked to the to the to the ceiling, so you

(02:59):
had this very narrow space that you'd crawl into and
on the night shifts you'd maybe get between five and
six hours sleep, but that'd be broken up into about
three three lots, and in between that you're ruin. So
there's always there's always someone on the oars, the boats.
The boat's always moving, and it's yeah, it's pretty relentless,
as you can imagine.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
It imagine pretty really What were some of the craziest things.
You saw things that you go, well, that's weird, how'd
that get here? What were some of those things?

Speaker 4 (03:28):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (03:29):
I mean you see all sorts of sights. Some of
it's kind of just like nature. So amazing cloud formations
that you just don't see on land because there's no
land masses that affect it.

Speaker 5 (03:39):
So you see these.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Huge, kind of huge clouds. You see a whole distribution
of very similarly sized clouds, and amazing sunsets and sunrises.
Sometimes it's quite scary though, you have We have one
point where there was literally lightning hitting the water, you know,
around us. It was all around us, these big lightning
clouds and we're sitting there thinking with the highest point
on this this ocean, to be careful.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
That's a good point because I was thinking about sharks
and you're not in really a pirate zone.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
But like my goodness, yeah yeah, and we we kind
of we got advice from our weather routo. You know
what do we do in that situation, And all he
said was just get your We had an anchor chain
just for when we got amongst islands, but he said,
if you get the anchor, wrap it around the highest
book point on the boat and then just drape it
into the water that it will attract the kind of

(04:29):
diffuse the any strikes into the into the ocean.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
So not really what you want to hear is so
you get the tallest brother, because that's what I do
to my brother because he's always going how taller. I said, well,
you know what, you know what you're gonna do. You
stand up with the chain mate and protect us. Well,
we're glad to see you back. And I just you're
a freshly shaven all one of you is still still
got the facial head of the big Moo.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
But when you first landed, you all look like you
were Tom Hanks, I must say in Castaway, A lot
of hair, a lot of beard.

Speaker 5 (05:00):
Yeah it was. Yeah, we got shaved on live TV,
which was quite kind of kind of exciting, but yeah,
we decided to keep a few new remnants. Lachlan did
have mutton chops, but I see he shaved him off
last night. I think the girlfriends won two beat. I
think this has got limited limited lifespan.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
That's a cookie, that's a cookie duster from hell that
could that could row back, that could row back by itself,
two of by itself. Boys, thank you for joining us
and you've done such a great job. You and Jamie Laughlin, thank.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
You, thank you Chat guys good.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
The McLean Brothers look out for him.