Biography
(The editor was a contributor to Windsurfing Magazine from 1996-2001, and appeared in various windsurfing forums as mtvnewsguy, and still sometimes writes for Windsurfing, The New England Windsurfing Journal etc. but this isn't about the editor...it's about the Peconic Puffin. Here's the story:)
A phoenix rises from the ashes. A puffin shakes off dirt and straw, blinks a few times, and then takes its goofy self off in search of its friends.
The Peconic Puffin was first published in 1993 as a weekly newspaper, focusing on a group of windsurfers who shared a summer house (The Puffin House) on the Peconic bays of Long Island, and the people they sailed and socialized with. Over time the group changed and expanded, people got married and bought their own houses or moved to Florida...but we all more or less kept sailing, and the Peconic Puffin chronicled our time together on and off the water.
But the issues came less and less frequently, and in 2004 there was no Puffin. That same year Steve and Cindy's house (the fourth and last known as the Puffin House) was demolished to make room for the house of their dreams. A sole copy of the No Puffin issue was placed in the broken earth, and that was the last Peconic Puffin ever printed.
Two years later the editors resurrected the title, now online as a hybrid of the classic PP and a windsurfing blog. The plan was to entertain the dozen or so former readers of the newsletter (the "Puffins", but it's turned into something a bit larger...now there are Puffins, Wind Chimps, Bunty from Malta...all kinds of folks. It's not quite a long strange trip, but it's getting there.
Here is the boilerplate from the print version of PP:
"PUFFIN: 1. any of several sea birds of the genera Fratercula and Lunda of northern regions, characteristically having black and white plumage and a vertically flattened, triangular bill that is brightly colored during breeding season. 2. Of or relating to an odd group of windsurfers and their families and friends, who often dwell on the Peconic Bays, Peconica, Peconic County, Northampton, which is also a winter playground for the Fratercula and Lunda."
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