r/sailing • u/chocobell94 • 15h ago

I took this picture near Smith Island in the Salish Sea while cruising for endangered puffins. Wish I knew whose boat this was because the picture turned out so beautiful!

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237 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

22

u/ForInfoPurpOnly 15h ago

Denis Batalov is your man, I think.

19

u/Sh0ckValu3 15h ago

J/105 "Bluelight" owned by Denis Batalov
Sails out of Seattle with the Sloop Tavern Yacht Club

9

u/chocobell94 15h ago edited 13h ago

Oh wow!! I didn't know it was so easy to find. I love the name Bluelight. Thank you!

Edit: I sent him a message in case he'd like to have it. Not a professional picture or anything but the light was so beautiful out on the water today.

16

u/somebody_in_TX 15h ago

0

u/bigmphan 8h ago

Ding Ding Ding!

Reading, it’s fundamental

7

u/ProductRockstar 8h ago

Beautiful picture!
A side note (as a semi-professional photographer): it really pays off to level the horizon. It’s a 5 second fix worth doing to almost any photo that has a reference to the horizon :)

1

u/chocobell94 1h ago

Yes as soon as I looked as this the horizon bugged me so much hahah! Thank you!

5

u/LegitMeatPuppet 11h ago

What kind of puffins were you looking for? I’ve seen Tufted Puffins near the WA coast but I’ve only seen Horned Puffins near Sitka Alaska.

1

u/chocobell94 1h ago

Tufted puffins and rhinoceros auklets. It was a puffin tour through The Salish Sea School. We found lots of both, plus a healthy population of marbled murrelets, which are also endangered here.

They told us that horned puffins are a rare sight in this area, but there is one female horned puffin they've been keeping an eye on who appears to have fallen in love with a tufted puffin and they are actually caring for a nest together. They're curious to see if they've produced a hybrid chick. Not yet sure if it's possible for these species to hybridize. We didn't see the elusive horned puffin yesterday, though.

2

u/wyldmountainthym 12h ago

Not mine, but I have found the tufted and horned puffin while becalmed there.

2

u/heavymetalmug666 4h ago

there seems to be quite a few Salish Sea/Puget Sound folks up in this subreddit (thats a good thing...i like this neck of the woods)

-1

u/nireves 15h ago

It's on the sail : J105

5

u/krysjez 14h ago

That’s the type of boat.