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Scottish brothers finish mammoth row across Pacific Ocean after 139 days

(www.abc.net.au)
80 points e2e4 | 4 comments | 31 Aug 25 00:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.77s | source
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3eb7988a1663 ◴[31 Aug 25 02:11 UTC] No.45079726[source]▶
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.

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1. jonah ◴[31 Aug 25 03:09 UTC] No.45080032[source]▶
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...

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2. squigz ◴[31 Aug 25 06:03 UTC] No.45080738[source]▶
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!
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3. esseph ◴[31 Aug 25 09:01 UTC] No.45081638[source]▶
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.

4. lazide ◴[31 Aug 25 15:46 UTC] No.45084087[source]▶
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.