9000 Miles, Three Brothers, One Mission
The Maclean Brothers’ Complete Record Breaking Charity Row Across the Pacific.
9000 Miles. Sounds like a long way, right?
It’s 138,000 full-length football pitches end-to-end.
It’s 1,637 Everests tall.
It’s 243 marathons back-to-back.
It’s 36% of the planet’s circumference.
How about rowing it? Non-stop - unsupported - across the Pacific Ocean.
…oh, also with your siblings?
Well that’s what Jamie, Ewan and Lachlan Maclean have just completed -
smashing a world record in the process and raising close to £1 million for clean water charities across Madagascar
- and we couldn’t be prouder of them!
The Contagious team first met the lads through their father, famed whisky writer and friend, Charlie Maclean, when they floated the idea past us about starting a charitable foundation and wanted to create a brand identity for it.
It was clear that these charming and passionate young men were serious about their intentions to make a positive impact on the world, so of course, we helped to design the look and feel for The Maclean Foundation.
Since then, we’ve helped the boys with packaging designs for exclusive whisky bottlings from the likes of Ardnamurchan, Raasay, and Glen Scotia, with the funds raised going to support The Maclean Foundation’s goals of delivering clean water to communities in Madagascar.
In the lead-up to the world-record-breaking row, Jamie, Ewan and Lachlan were kind enough to invite a few of us to their training ground, a tiny bothy in the remote region of Assynt, where we were put to the oars and got to experience a day out at sea on their specially designed vessel.
After a couple of hours of repetitive rowing, sore arms and bums, feeling the wind chill and overall, just being generally quite uncomfortable, it dawned on all of us the enormity of the task the guys were setting themselves.
Only a few weeks away from shipping out to Peru to start the journey, the three brothers gave us a very fun, creative challenge: to design the wrap for the boat itself. We came up with a design that ties in the boys’ proud Scottish identity, their headline sponsor ‘Rare Whisky 101’ and something super eye-catching that would inspire the boys as they continued their voyage.
As the boys set foot back on land, after 140 days at sea, we’re sure they will be filled with mixed emotions as they process the massive feat they have just accomplished.
For us, what we find most inspiring about this triumph is that while these are three very determined, purpose-driven, and ambitious men, they’re also just three normal Scottish guys who have proved that making a big positive impact on the world is possible, if you only decide to do it.