A Gray Day on the Bay

Georgian Bay is often known as the 6th Great Lake.  Four of the lakes are shared between the U.S. and Canada (Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario), one is in the U.S. (Michigan), and Georgian Bay, really just a huge bay off Lake Huron, is entirely in Ontario.  You can find them all easily on any map of North America.

But Georgian Bay is one of the most beautiful of them all in my opinion, especially for its shoreline further north - rivalled only by Lake Superior.

I was in Meaford today for a meeting and dropped down to the harbour afterwards to take some pictures.  I've posted some brilliant blue summer pictures of the bay before, but this is a much more typical winter view - gray and slightly menacing.

Meaford is a popular sailing harbour, but all the boats are long since out of the water to protect them from the ice, and sitting in wait for next spring.  The winter wind was howling while I was there, and all the cables on these boats were snapping and clanging in the breeze.

It's not entirely a recreational harbour; this looked like an old fishing tug on the left, and the Canadian Coast Guard's 'Westport' was up on the dock also waiting for the next season.  I didn't know there was a Coast Guard station here until I saw EGCameraGirl's post a week ago - though her picture is taken earlier in the season and is of a different boat.

The whole harbour is behind huge stone breakwaters (seen in the background here) to protect the boats from occasional storms rolling in off the bay, .  I liked this composition with the old ship's anchor in the foreground and the small lighthouse in the back.  There's a huge history of shipping on Georgian Bay, like all the Great Lakes, including many shipwrecks over the past century and a half..

The sun peaked out behind the gray clouds for a few moments and the snow gusts abated long enough for me to get this closer picture of the light.  Boaters have to be careful to follow the right channel leaving and entering this harbour.

A final nice view of the light with a patch of blue sky over the bay (which quickly disappeared in favour of high winds and gusty blowing snow for my drive home).

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