Superstorm Sandy has put a pre-mature end to this year's on-water rowing practice. I shot the above video a couple of weeks before the storm hit. And I'd hoped to get out there some more. I only got to row a single twice. The video is of my second time sculling. I'm pretty rough. I don't hold the oars even. I can't feather them. I haven't figured out how to get even power. But it was a beautiful day and I rowed the perimeter of New Bedford Harbor, which took about an hour (rowing inside the hurricane barrier and excluding the superfund, clean-up site).
Last week, I wrote on this blog that I would post photos of my recently completed large drawing. I should have been in New York during Sandy getting the drawing photographed. Instead, I stayed up in Massachusetts to help keep watch on my mom's house. I did have to get up on a barn roof during the hurricane and staple down a strip of roofing that blew off. But, otherwise, things were pretty light.
At New Bedford Community Rowing, all the boats were taken off their outdoor rack, shrink wrapped, and staked to the ground. Today, I went over to help unwrap some and re-rig them. Unfortunately, the single that I rowed in the video seems to have been taken off site, stowed away for the winter. So I may have to wait until next Spring to work on my technique.
I'll be heading home to Brooklyn Sunday or Monday so that I can vote on Tuesday. And I hope to get my work Photographed soon. I'll also get a chance to help my friends who've been effected by the storm. I fear that at least one of my drawings was destroyed by Sandy*; it was at the gallery where my January show is scheduled. The gallery suffered heavy flooding -- Kind of ironic considering that the two central pieces of that show will (hopefully!) be 1) a drawing of a ship getting subsumed by a storm -- and 2) the pair of wooden oars that I've been working on since August. Oars aren't much use against a storm, especially without a boat.
(* update 11/4/12: the drawing survived!)
