Puff the Magic Dinghy

This is a story about a little 11-foot wooden sailboat at our family cabin in Pender Harbour. I’ve been lucky enough to sail Puff 11 or 12 times each summer since 1986. After all these years, I still look forward to settling down on the floor, sheeting in the mainsail, trimming the tiny jib and beating upwind on a warm breeze into Gunboat Bay. The sounds of water against the hull, wind in the sails and the lively action of the boat are magical on a summer day.

PUFF IS A Mirror dinghy, one of over 70,000 in one of the largest dinghy fleets on the planet. Her flat bow and orange sails stand out amongst all other boats on the water. In 1965, an English newspaper, the Daily Mirror, held a contest for a small sailboat design. Jack Holt and Barry Bucknell came up with an easy to build, stitch and glue design that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. Kits were shipped all over the world, and 60 years later there are still Mirror regattas in several countries.

My wife’s mom and stepdad brought the Mirror, two cedar and canvas canoes and an eight-foot sabot to Pender Harbour when they bought an older cabin on the waterfront in 1986. There was an old dock where the boats could be kept during summer months.

Over the summer, several families shared the cabin and while everyone loved the two canoes, Puff and the sabot, Sea Wolf, didn’t get as much use. When our family showed up for our two or three weeks each summer, I sailed Puff while my wife Pam and her stepdad Richard sailed Sea Wolf.

I took to the Mirror like a hound dog to a field and figured I’d better look after her. Almost every day, I’d go down to the dock, hoist Puff’s sails and venture out into the bay on a warm breeze. I’d tack upwind to the head of Gunboat Bay, turn around and run back down the bay toward the cabin. There is a channel from Gunboat Bay that opens into the main part of Pender Harbour but we never ventured through there as currents were strong when the tide was changing. It was more like sailing on a lake than the ocean.

Thus began a partnership that continues to this day.

I THINK MY attraction to this little boat stems from a project my dad and I did when I was about 16. He’d sailed on lakes in Ontario as a kid and decided that he’d teach me how to sail. He bought a kit from Kitsilano Marine that was the same concept as the Mirror. Precut panels, stitch and glue construction and easy to sail. It was another one-design sailboat from England—a Signet, 12 feet overall.

In our basement, we built that boat together and launched it down at the Coast Guard station by the Burrard Bridge. I still remember our first sail, tacking back and forth out of the inlet into English Bay, dodging all the other boats coming and going from False Creek. I took a lot of pride looking after that little boat and really enjoyed sailing around English Bay for a couple of summers.

More than a decade later I met Puff at the cabin, and we formed a pretty cool partnership.

Pam and I had three kids between 1982 and 1988. While I don’t recall needing to bring a diaper bag, it wasn’t too long after the diaper stage that we took the kids sailing, usually one at a time. Graeme, Nathan or Naomi would scamper around the cockpit or climb onto Puff ’s tiny foredeck, all bundled up in a life jacket, and duck underneath the jib as we tacked back and forth. I don’t know how old they were when we pushed them away from the dock on their own, but it was likely younger than 12 years old.

Over the decades, Puff has sailed hundreds of kilometres on Gunboat Bay. She’s been raced in our neighbourhood regatta, dismasted in a “Sailing Wars” water fight, capsized in a squall and stopped by a rock we didn’t know was there at low tide. She’s had deck panels repaired, a fibreglass outer surface applied to the hull, a new rig (mast, booms and sails) and countless repairs on parts that eventually break or wear out. She’s been navy blue, light blue and is currently dark green.

THE LITTLE BOAT has afforded us so many great memories. Our good friends Jan and Paul and their three kids Jeff, Meghan and Neal were there one summer and during their visit another session of sailing wars broke out. This was a water fight our family played when there wasn’t much wind and several boats were out. We used buckets of water, paddles for splashing, clumps of seaweed and wet sponges.

Sometimes I’d pretend to be an 18th century English captain shouting commands to my crew. I’d pound a paddle on the floor of Puff as if it was a drum calling my troops (one or two kids) to battle. Instead of cannons echoing around the bay there were gales of laughter and excited shouting as Sea Wolf, Sea Fox, Puff and others came together to exchange soggy broadsides.

On one of these days, Paul pushed off from the dock in Puff with my youngest son Nathan and Paul’s son Neal for crew. The breeze was sweet, not a cloud in the sky, and Puff seemed delighted. Pam’s uncle Stan kept his CL14 at our dock so I jumped in with Naomi and Paul’s daughter Meghan, we trimmed the sails and headed out after the others. Two dads, four kids and an afternoon playtime that would live forever. We were chasing Puff up the bay and closing quickly, being the larger, faster dinghy. Buckets were made ready, paddle splashers deployed and the fun was about to begin.

As we neared Puff and started to overtake her on our lee side, a small cleat on the end of the CL14’s boom hooked on to the windward stay on Puff. Naomi shouted, “Dad! We’re hooked on Puff ’s stay!” We were actually pulling Puff along. Skipper Paul, sitting on Puff ’s floor, launched himself toward the stay to detach it from our boom. The pressure to release was too much for Puff ’s aging rig. The stay broke away from the gunwale and the mast came crashing down into the sea. Puff calmly drifted towards the shore as Paul and the boys sorted out the mess. Naomi, Megs and I circled around and threw a tow line to Puff. We got her back to the dock, I did the repairs and the next day she was sailing again.

THAT WAS 30 years ago. Both Nathan and Naomi have since had their weddings at the cabin, and of course Puff and the other sailboats were launched, crewed by adults who remembered being kids on the same bay, sailing, laughing and splashing the afternoons away.

Last summer, 2025, one of my best memories of Puff took shape like a scene from a Disney movie.

Naomi’s son is five years old and he’d never been in a small sailboat. After some pre-sail talk about the ways of small boat sailing, Naomi came down to the dock with Kodiak (all bundled up in a life jacket) to go for their first ever sail together. Sensing a special moment, I zipped back to the cabin to grab my camera. My heart was pounding. I knew this was one of those moments that would last a lifetime for all of us. Maybe I’d kept Puff going all these years just for this moment.

Thirty-five years after her first sail in Puff, seeing Naomi and her son tacking upwind on Oyster Bay in the same boat felt intensely satisfying. Kodiak settled into Puff like he’d known all along this would just be a natural part of his cabin time each summer. Naomi was now the teacher, the sailor, passing her experience to her son, just like my dad did for me when I was a kid.

OVER THE YEARS, we somehow acquired other small sailboats—a couple more sabots, a Force Five and an Enterprise. They’re all old and need care, but Puff remains, for me at least, the sweetheart of the fleet. She’s usually the first boat I put in the water. Some of the others don’t get much use anymore, except Larakin, Pam’s Force Five. These days, Pam, Naomi and Nathan love to sail the faster Force Five, but for me to be in Puff, and have any one of them sail up beside me in Larakin is utterly delightful.

We all carry stories that shape and mold who we become as adults. Little wooden boats at a cabin, grandma’s farm, our first skate on the pond, family camping trips, riding bikes in the neighbourhood with cards on our spokes. These are the good stories we keep, and they live in our memories right next to the tough stories of endurance, survival and loss.

All these stories are important and powerful. I think Pam’s mom and stepdad understood that a summer cabin, a few small boats and sharing time with family and friends was the best gift they could leave to their kids. There’d be lots of stories and that’s what summer is all about.