Scottish brothers finish mammoth row across Pacific Ocean after 139 days

So many practical questions about how this worked. Sleeping, food/water (cooking the fish, seasonings?, did they have stretches where they failed to catch anything), boredom - did they have a radio/podcast library, how much rowing per day, how are the bowels after five months of hardtack and fish, how does your skin handle constant saltwater exposure without showering, etc

Also - I want to see a before photo. They all look pretty slim, but I imagine anyone would after five months of rowing and eating nothing but vitamins and fish.

At the bottom of the article there are links to two related articles from before they started out and when they were halfway through. They answer many of your questions.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-22/scottish-maclean-brot...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-08/scottish-maclean-brot...

I saw an interview with them on the news here. Im sure I heard one of them say one of somehow managed to gain weight during it!

I'll file that fact away for the next time I hear somebody here say "all you need is exercise to lose weight".

Pretty interesting stuff. I'm a bit surprised with the food choices, although to be fair they didn't elaborate too much. But just freeze dried and store-bought foods? And they were talking about eating it cold! Someone needs to show them MREs and flameless ration heaters!

I have ~never heard anyone say this. All I've heard here is fighting about whether it's just a pure caloric deficit that helps you lose weight, or if it's other things as well.

The version of MREs before the current tan bags, the brown bags (Desert Storm era), were freeze dried meals.

They also come with a lot of stuff you don't want to eat for an extended period of time, and a lot of trash waste.

Muscles weigh more than fat. Training doesn't make you lose weight, it makes you denser.

For talisker, most/all the rowers will have freeze dried food (store bought or self-made). The boats have a desalination plant (the boats have solar panels) so they do have fresh water, but only enough for drinking/eating, they would normally jump into the ocean to rinse themselves.

yes, they bring they own electronic devices, but you do have to be judicious in usage due to the aforementioned solar panels not being very big. Here's a picture (to be clear, this one used for the talisker, the ABC articles have a better image of the one specifically used by the brothers):

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSmNq8z...

It appears that space was at an extreme premium - and remember, if they rowed, weight matters as well. MREs work in an environment where you have trucks (or planes) dropping off pallets of them on the regular, not where you need to bring 6 months of them along on something you are moving under your own power.

Long distance ultra light hikers and expedition type folks tend to bring freeze dried food (either way they can’t carry enough water so need to figure that out). Vitamins to avoid any weird effects from missing nutrients from ‘found food’ was also a good idea.