Fourth of July in Trenton

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 95 - July 4, 2017

They don't, you know, celebrate the Fourth of July in Canada. No bands, parades or fireworks. Canada welcomed American Loyalists or Tories after the Revolutionary War, who came by the thousands. Actually, perhaps the Canadians are still a bit sore about the Fourth of July, since the English lost - Queen Elizabeth II is still the Queen of Canada, and Prince Charles will be King of Canada, after all. So the Fourth of July is just kind of another day in Canada!

Pretty much all day the Aquatic Weed Machine was busy at work alongside I dock. This has nothing to do with the Fourth of July or anything else, but it is a pretty amazing machine! Our theory is that for every weed it cuts off under the water, three more grow up to take its place!

Aquatic Weed Removal Machine

Town of Trenton 1861 Town Hall,
now the Trent Port Historical Society

We had a pretty busy and fun day. In the morning, we got our second round of laundry done. That was not the fun part!  The fun began when we rode our bikes to Heritage Cafe at the Trent Port Historical Society, which was very interesting, The Heritage Cafe is staffed entirely by volunteers, and serves very reasonably priced breakfasts and lunches. All the profits go back into the Historical Society.

The Historical Society is in the historic Town of Trenton Town Hall. It is kind of a museum, and there are some historical artifacts on display, but the Historical Society's goal is really to build a searchable database of Trenton History, including photographs and historical documents. 

The marina and municipal building do not say "Trenton" - they say "City of Quinte West." So I inquired of the lady at the Historical Society what the heck the relationship was between Trenton and Quinte West. It seems Quinte West was formed out of all the area villages and towns, including the city of Trenton, the village of Frankford and the townships of Murray and Sidney, and other surrounding communities, on January 1, 1998. 

New bland Quinte West City Hall

Interesting Old Quinte West City
 Hall Clock Tower

Quinte West had a very nice old City Hall downtown with a clock tower, but the powers that be decided it was not adequate and constructed a large, functional, completely uninteresting new City Hall, which is directly adjacent to the Trent Port Marina. Actually, the only remaining part of the original City Hall is the clock tower - and none of it is used for anything at all now. Go figure.

After lunch we continued to ride our bikes on a few missions! I wanted to see if I could gin up something to replace the broken spigot for our water jug, a Reliance Aquatainer. So we rode out to Home Hardware. By coincidence, Nate Card of Wild Card Brewing was just coming out, and remembered me from my earlier visit to the brewery, so we chatted beer for awhile! Amazingly, Home Hardware had a replacement spigot made by Reliance for the Reliance Aquatainer, so no Rube Goldberg solution was required! 

Then we pedaled on to the LCBO - Canadian for liquor store, eh? I think it probably means Liquor Control Board of Ontario, where we replenished our bar stock, after severely depleting it in order to be legal entering Canada. Prices were about double what we pay in Washington State, which has the highest liquor taxes in the U.S. On the plus side, the exchange rate softened the blow considerably! Between my backpack and Patty's Raymarine cloth bag, we managed to carry it all!

Finally, we stopped by the Metro Supermarket for ginger root - doesn't everybody carry fresh ginger root on their boat? Well, we do, and a whole lot more. Ginger root, along with Panko, which we already had, is evidently necessary for one of our favorite recipes for several types of white fish. I think we have ingredients for just about anything!

As we were heading back to our boat after our bike ride / shopping trip, a Cutwater 28 was tying up on I dock. It had an AGLCA Looper burgee flying, so I said hello, which lead to another evening of "docktails" and conversation! 

The owner of the Cutwater, Riverdance, is Bill Parsons of Knoxville, TN, who was cruising with his son.  Bill said C-Dory had been on his "short list," but was unaware of the strange history between Ranger and C-Dory, and I was of course more than happy to elucidate! Cutwater boats are made by Ranger Tugs, and Ranger Tugs and C-Dory once had a connection through the ill-fated C-Ranger project, which was designed by Dave Livingston of Ranger Tugs and was going to be marketed by C-Dory, principally Jeff Messmer - we bought Daydream in 2005 from Jeff at the Seattle Boat Show. The C-Ranger project never got off the ground, but led to the Ranger 25 and the immensely successful line of Ranger Tugs, with C-Dory's best people, Jeff Messmer (sales) and Andrew Custis (customer service), leaving C-Dory and going over to Ranger Tugs.

Bill told us some of his history as the owner of one of the country's largest kit log home companies, which was devastated by the Great Recession of the late 2000s. It turns out Bill was raised in Melbourne Beach, FL., and knew (or knew of?) our friend Jonathan Arthur and Honest John's Fish Camp, where we had spent a very enjoyable three days.  I hope  we will see Bill and his Cutwater somewhere up the line, we enjoyed our evening talking to him.

Since we are heading out on the Trent-Severn Waterway tomorrow, I got the bikes folded up, put in their bags, and lashed back on top of the boat, and also put the kayak up.  Then I topped off  the water tank. Patty gave me a haircut (I always say "Hey, it will grow back" but she is actually pretty good with the scissors), I went up and took my shower, and we turned out the lights to get a good night's rest!