Meet the “Map Nerd” Behind Hydrow’s Most Beautiful Destinations

Before a Hydrow Athlete takes the first stroke—and long before a new workout appears on your screen—Andrea Buch has already spent months studying maps, tracking the weather, scouting shorelines, and solving problems most people would never think to ask about.

Can rowing boats actually get there? Is there enough uninterrupted water to film a complete workout? What will the light look like at sunrise? Where can the crew launch—and what happens if the dock disappears with the tide?

As Hydrow prepares to film its newest destination workouts, we’re introducing you to the person responsible for turning a beautiful location into a real Hydrow destination.

From lifelong rower to global location scout

Andrea originally joined Hydrow in 2020 to drive the filming boat. Her background made her uniquely suited for the job: She was a lifelong rower, former coach, competitive athlete, and employee of a rowing boat builder.

As Hydrow’s destination shoots expanded beyond familiar waterways in Boston and Florida, Andrea’s role grew with them. Today, she helps choose and scout locations, plans the filming schedule, coordinates the on-water logistics, and keeps the athletes, crew, and equipment safe throughout every shoot.

It’s a job that combines deep rowing knowledge with a lifelong love of geography.

“I was a geography major and a big map nerd growing up,” Andrea says. “I have an above-average sense of the lay of the land in a lot of the world.”

That “map nerd” instinct has now helped bring Hydrow Members to waterways across the globe.

Beautiful is only the beginning

A breathtaking view might put a potential location on Andrea’s radar, but that alone doesn’t make it right for Hydrow.

Every destination has to deliver three essential things:

1. A setting Members will be excited to explore

2. Enough rowable water to film on

3. The infrastructure needed to support a full production

Some iconic waterways simply aren’t long enough. Others are too busy with ferries or boat traffic. Even the perfect stretch of water may be ruled out if there isn’t a place to launch, store equipment, or source the boats the team needs.

Andrea begins by remotely scouting each location, researching its waterways, rowing community, weather patterns, seasonality, launch points, and production resources. Then she goes there herself.

She has personally scouted every international destination Hydrow has filmed in, along with most of its domestic locations. During those visits, she meets local contacts, explores the shoreline, tests possible routes, and studies how the conditions change throughout the day.

That often means arriving at the water for sunrise—even immediately after an overnight flight—and staying through sunset to understand when the light and water will be at their best.

It also means being willing to improvise.

While scouting Hawaii, Andrea found the water Hydrow needed but couldn’t find a filming boat available to rent. So she drove around the waterfront until she met a harbormaster, who connected her with the private owner of a pontoon boat. Without that one locally owned boat, the entire shoot might not have been possible.

“No two places are the same,” Andrea says. “Everywhere you go, there’s a learning curve.”

Building a studio from scratch—every day

Choosing the destination is only the beginning.

Once the team arrives, it must effectively build an outdoor production studio from scratch each morning—and take it all apart again at the end of the day.

The crew prepares the rowing and filming boats, sets up camera and audio equipment, mics the athletes, and gets everyone safely onto the water. The process changes at every location. Sometimes there is a dock; sometimes the team launches directly from shore. Sometimes there was a dock the day before, but the tide has moved it out of reach.

Then there are the variables no schedule can fully control: wind, weather, water conditions, light, technical issues, athlete energy, and crew capacity.

Andrea estimates that the filming plan changes in some way about 20% of the time. Her schedule is intentionally designed to make those pivots possible.

A typical destination day begins at sunrise, when the light is best and the water is often calmest. One athlete will usually film a three-workout block, followed by another athlete. The team may return to the water later in the day for a second filming window.

Six to nine completed workouts is standard for a day, although the team has filmed as many as 16.

Each athlete generally records around 45 total minutes of finished workout content per day—a limit Andrea has developed through years of balancing the physical and mental demands of coaching on camera.

Behind every workout Members see is a carefully orchestrated production shaped around the conditions of that particular day.

“There are the best-laid plans, and then there are the pivots,” Andrea says.

What all that work means for you

The challenges involved in filming around the world are largely invisible once a workout reaches your Hydrow screen. That’s the point.

Members don’t have to think about shipping rowing shells across oceans, tracking down a boat at a local marina, or rebuilding a floating studio before sunrise. They simply get to sit down and be transported somewhere new.

This work is also what makes it possible for Hydrow to offer thousands of workouts without making the experience feel repetitive. Each destination brings a different landscape, atmosphere, story, and energy to the library—whether you’re in the mood for the turquoise water of the Exumas, the dramatic coastline of Hawaii, or, soon, a storybook journey through the French Alps.

And increasingly, Members are helping decide where Hydrow goes next.

For Andrea, that feedback adds a new layer to the challenge she loves: finding the intersection between the places Members dream of exploring and the places Hydrow can bring to life on the water.

“There’s a whole world that exists that nobody sees,” she says. “What goes into all of it is pretty remarkable.”