maybe the start of something new

One reason (really, the reason) we didn't end up going to many Doors Open events this year is because we started a bit late, on Sunday, and then we ended up staying so long at our first location — there was a half-hour guided tour, and then a queue, and then another half-hour cruise — that we didn't really have time for anything else.

But, as they say, we regret nothing.


The Westwood Sailing Club, which is located in the portlands off Cherry Street, by the Leslie Street Spit. (Actually, that picture is deceptive because the depth of field is shot. The land jutting out from the right is just a small part of the mainland harbour; the land jutting out from the left is actually the spit, and the two don't meet. There is a wide, not-inconsequential band of Lake Ontario between them; you just can't see it in this particular photograph.)



Albacore dinghies
Westwood is a small, volunteer-run sailing club with its own fleet of dinghies that members take out onto the lake. It is seriously small and DIY — the clubhouse, such as it is, is a disused school portable that the founders hauled from North York in the 1960s. Volunteers built the deck and added a small kitchenette. They got running water ... last year. It is completely and totally like summer camp.


A larger catamaran. Most of the others are smaller, without the cage
The history of the club is really interesting, actually. Apparently the portlands and the spit were created with infill from the dugging of the Toronto subway in the 1960s. It was meant as a deep-water port for all of the anticipated shipping traffic that would come off the St Lawrence Seaway (opened in 1959). The traffic never materialized, though, because container shipping made the seaway obsolete. The Outer Harbour is still there, though, and well protected by the spit, so someone got the bright idea of turning it into a volunteer sailing club.

As part of the tour, volunteers were giving visitors a quick sailboat trip around the Outer Harbour. Pd and I were lucky enough to go, by ourselves (plus the skipper, of course) in a catamaran.


More visitors leaving the dock
Catamarans are seriously fun. The seating area is basically a piece of nylon stretched taut, like a trampoline; there's no protection from the elements at all. Which, on an amazing and perfect sailing day like Sunday, is completely and totally perfect.

We had been warned by our tour guide that we would be expected to crew for our skipper, which in this instance merely meant that we would be controlling the jib (the small sail at the front) — tugging at a rope when told to, basically. Except that we had a very nice and relaxed skipper, and he let us take the helm! He turned the catamaran around and let me steer us just past the Eastern Gap (where the Toronto islands break off from the mainland — amazing view of the downtown, there), turned us around, and let Pd steer us on the way back. And he also instructed us on how to control the jib to catch the best wind. Of course.

(I have no pictures of us actually in the catamaran, doing any of this cool stuff, or of the view, because I'd left my bag back on try land. I decided that the "no protection from the elements" thing also extended to pricey consumer electronics. And anyway, I wouldn't have had time or hands to take pictures — he actually made us work! But believe me, it was the best Doors Open event ever.)