Sunrise on the snow dusting and Flat Iron mountains  

Fall in Boulder  

sunrise looking north  

same view the following day when it warmed up a bit  

Kait and Kevin were the most chill and relaxed soon-to-be-married couple I’ve ever seen.  

Kait and Kevin married at an amazing lookout spot  

at the summit of a hike looking west towards the Rockies  

Our friends Kait and Kevin got married in Bouldee, CO. It was beautiful there and our group was treated to snow on the first day. There were social events, hikes, photos and the incredibly fun wedding.  

was home at the boat this weekend which will be that last weekend spent local for a over a month. Next weekend is October Birthdays in SLO. The next after that is Colorado for a wedding. The next weekend after that is plane flights to Bolivia and South America for 2 more weekends. 

This sailboat was in the 60’ range and made Santa Monica bay look small  

Saturday I hung out with Mia and friends poolside in Marina Del Rey before hopping on Connors boat with one of his friends and testing out the autopilot and whisker pole. Sunday Mia and I saw Connor leave, “going to anchor at Bluff Cove” he said. We were wanting to take a hike so went to the same place on land and I took some pictures. 

Couldn’t have been more pleasant weather to be outside in October. Light wind and about 85 degrees outside.  

Sea Casa at Bluff Cove

Bioluminescence in the wake as we tested out the windvane autopilot.  

Connor leaves on November 6th and has a website for the trip, sailingseacasa.com  

Fall-camouflaged butterfly in the garden by the sea 

Moon is almost full so I wanted to try some star photos on the dock.  

A Cenoura on the right, evidently tied to the dock tighter than the sailboat on the left (considering the blur of the standing rigging) 

 birds soar and ride the gusty ocean breeze 

Visited SLO for the weekend to check up on horses and enjoy the early fall summer-like weather  

Rosie in the shade of a chair and other dogs at the horse barn

Have a look at the biology of the bottom left flower - a 1/6th slice of it is just red, I had to wait until something landed on it. 

Leif standing at a popular photo spot in Alabama Hills, a campground / rock formation near Lone Pine. Mt Whitney is in the background  

Alabama Hills - now on my bucket list to come back and camp tucked behind these huge rocks.  

Glad I carpooled up with Leif, he's a great photographer and was the inspiration to take dirt roads around the valley to find this spot.  

It was the weekend of Kevin Tsuchiya's bachelor party up in June Lake. That's north past Mammoth lakes in the Sierra National forest, just east of Yosemite National Park. We drove up Friday and stopped at Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, in the valley between Kings Canykn to the west and Inyo National Forest to the east. I was happy to have an excuse to drive my truck on bumpy dirt roads just for the hunt to find a spot to take photos. An unseasonable cold front was happening during the last couple days leaving snow on all the mountains and also meant that it would begin snowing just as we were arriving in the little town on June Lake. Fortunately the snow wasn't sticking on the ground so we made there without problems. I slept in my truck bed both nights and it would get into the low-mid-20s. Saturday we fished along the Owens River where dirt roads lead to dirt parking lots, you park and walk through the bogs to find a spot away from other serious flyfishers. It felt like a completely different world and lifestyle than I'm ever exposed to so it was a great change of pace.  

Kevin scoping for the best fishing potential in the Owens River

Kevin using a new fly fishing rod along the small river  

Ian let us all crash at his family's June Lake cabin, taught people how to flyfish and shoot his guns - legend. View of and from our fishing setup. Arty played the biggest part planning the whole weekend 

Along the Owens River shooting north towards Mt Gibbs  

A stop at a makeshift shooting range on the way to June Lake in the late afternoon. It's a different world out here, you drive down a dirt road for a mile and there's just trash to shoot at in front of a hill - that's the shooting range. Temps dropped about 20 degrees as soon as the sun was behind the mountains  

I finally got a chance to shoot real starlight.  

It was a learning experience, I need to make sure to use a remote shutter and not shake the camera while it's open for a 30 second exposure. 

Taken from the cabins balcony. It was so cold I would stand out there until my hands hurt, warm up inside, go back outside and try again  

two rolls of film from May were lost in the mail for more than 3 months, a flaw in the 35mm process that further convinced me to buy my digital camera. Anyway they finally made it to the developer. They included photos of the puppy's first weekend, a trip to my dads new boat slip in San Pedro, a sail and Easter in Sierra Madre. 

Days before Sophie turned 8 months  

Mia and I flew up to San Jose early Saturday morning and met with her family to help in any way we could to get James moved into his first year housing at Santa Clara University. We were all super excited and happy be there and see such a big moment.  In the afternoon he had orientation meetings to attend and the rest of us went to Livermore to see my mom, scott Nicole and Sophie at Tenuta Vineyards. It was a perfect few hours to hang out, followed by a really fun dinner in Livermore and then back to San Jose. Sunday we hunt around to run any errands and finish setting up anything we could before catching a flight back home. 

Scott, Nicole and Sophie make for a photogenic family

my friend Connor owns and lives on Sea Casa, his Hunter 31 that he has been preparing for a long open-ended sail down to Panama and East to Florida. For over a year since he made his decision he has been taking on all the precautionary and maintenance projects that this sailboat could ever need. the other weekend he sailed to MDR to a more reputable boat yard for a set of all new standing rigging. Because he's a liveaboard he had to get it back to Redondo while the yard worked on the rigging. I tagged along for a mast-less motor on a weeknight. Weather was great considering the night before was the thunderstorm and the seastate was comfortable enough to make it pretty easy. It made me want to go night sailing. 

A week later he texted me to see if I'd be available for a night sail and I was. The wind was light enough around 6-8 knots so he hoisted up the asymmetrical spinnaker while I handled the lines and steering. We went from 1 knot to 4.5-5 in the light wind. 

Just before leaving San Luis Obispo Sunday night we saw lightning flashes through the fog. A quick check of radar maps let us know we'd be driving through a building thunderstorm for basically the entire way to LA. I was excited, Mia was not. For most of the trip lightning was appearing over the water or on the horizons except during the highway 154 pass which is up the back of the Santa Barbara mountains. Mia was covering her eyes and ears and lightning bolts were striking very close and through heavy tropical rain. When we got back to Redondo around 11:30 Mia wanted to watch the weather because on radar, it was out safely beyont Catalina Island. We grabbed our cameras and phones and watched from the main channel and then out on the breakwall. I got lucky a few times with using a manual focus lens and 1 second shutter speeds. 

Neighbors project vehicles  

Took a drive up to SLO for a quick weekend trip, marking Mia's brother James's last weekend before moving north for college. We all visited the horses both days and took a walk with the puppy Sunday morning, played tennis, had lots of fun. 

a stranger having and easy Sunday morning 

Rosie has gotten so much bigger than the last time I saw her, she's 5.5 months now. 

Willow is perpetually stuck on whichever side of the house that Rosie isn't in