Five Practical Tips: Working from Home

Struggling with the temporary transition to working from home? As co-founder of Aventine Consulting, I have worked as a consultant to big pharma from an established home office for more than a decade now and can offer some helpful advice from time-tested experience. Like many of us here at Aventine, I have long-ago battled and…

By Jamie March 30, 2020 0

Time-Out, GenX

Get home for dinner before the street lights turn on, I reminisced tonight, as the hum of the mercury lights kicked on nearby. Nostalgia is seeping into the quiet corners of my corona lock-down experience. It’s taken a few days for me to identify the subtle flavor in my thoughts…it’s childhood, GenX. I was a…

By Jamie March 27, 2020 4

Afloat at the Dawn of Corona

Prized rum, pictured above, carefully tailored for Team Get Kraken by a most thoughtful and generous neighbor (P.A.), who epitomizes the Day Islander community spirit (no pun intended). Wait, isn’t this blog about some rookie training for the Seventy48? Yes, this blog is about my training for the Seventy48, as Team Get Kraken (N =…

By Jamie March 19, 2020 2

Overcoming Defiance

Until today, my training had been limited to laps of the Day Island lagoon and the Titlow basin – about a mile and quarter each lap with a variety of navigational obstacles making getting into a rhythm a little tricky. A handful of local harbor seals and friendly island neighbors cast inquisitive looks my way…

By Jamie March 7, 2020 6

Seventy48: Get Kraken!

The email came in this afternoon: “Congrats and welcome aboard.  You’re in! “ *SQUEEEEEAL* and gulp. I have officially been accepted as a solo rower into the 70-mile, human-powered only race from Tacoma to Port Townsend this June: the Seventy48. It was a natural progression of events… Matthew and I have immersed ourselves each year as…

By Jamie March 2, 2020 9

Wallhangers & Lawn Art

No cruise is complete without a thorough exploration of the local pubs, restaurants, and neighborhoods (usually in that order).  It’s not just beer, food, and exercise that I’m after when I’m poking about town.  I enjoy looking at the art and artifacts that the locals put on display.  What you find hanging from the walls…

By Matthew October 12, 2018 0

Sail Like a Girl…

While this phrase inspires Girl Power on it’s own, in this case I’m referring to the all-girl winning crew of the 2018 Race to Alaska (R2AK). The spirit of these courageous and tenacious ladies was an inspirational force aboard Awesome and will surely endure in the mind of our little 5 year old. She followed their…

By Jamie June 25, 2018 6

Signs of Alaska

I grew up in a sign-painting family and worked in the industry for a number of my early years.  Back then, the zoning boards and code enforcers did everything they could to tamp down signage in the visible landscape.  Urban planners said signs were, “just a means of indexing the environment.”  Well such ‘planning’ was…

By Matthew June 21, 2018 0

Sitka: Can you hear me now?

By boat, Sitka is pretty darn far out there – for us anyway. To reach Sitka without exposing ourselves to big open ocean, there are a series of narrow and breath-taking passages that wind through, past, and by places like Murder Cove, Peril Strait, Poison Cove, Sergius Narrows, and The Eye Opener (a lone rock,…

By Jamie June 20, 2018 1

Whale Watching in Reverse

There’s a perpetual joke aboard Awesome that I have somehow been whale jinxed: whales seem to avoid me like the plague. I’ve come to accept this as one of my real-life super powers. Along with choosing the slowest line at the grocery store and causing all cross-town traffic lights to go red, I also have…

By Jamie June 12, 2018 1