Jacksonville downtime

As I begin typing we are anchored in the St. Johns River in downtown Jacksonville, Florida (map), at what we used to call the Baptist Hospital anchorage, but instead we now universally call the Suspicious Boat Anchorage. Today is our final day of a full week in town, and we will leave on the tide for an anchorage downriver, to position ourselves to continue south in the morning. I had originally planned to write this up under way tomorrow, but there's a lot to cover, and tomorrow's cruise requires a lot of attention to the helm.

Sunset over the Acosta and FEC bridges from the Landings.

Before I dive in, let me say that one of the things I ticked off my list here was to catch up on nearly two months worth of blog comments. So if you submitted a comment but never saw it post, and/or are awaiting an answer, have a look now because it should be there. I'd love to turn the comment moderation off for the blog, but we're still getting a fair amount of comment spam that needs to be weeded out.

Entering the St Johns from the ICW we pass the BAE shipyard. Two Great Lakes cruise ships are in for work, behind a superyacht. We actually contacted them about painting Vector, without response.

When last I posted here we were still offshore, headed for the St. Marys Inlet. We arrived, unavoidably, on an ebb tide and had to fight our way in against 2-3 knots of current, making the last few miles of the trip seem interminable. Nevertheless we had the anchor down in a familiar anchorage in the Amelia River (map) in time to tender ashore in Fernandina Beach for dinner. We went to an old stand-by, Arte Pizza, and were disappointed to find it was not as good as we remembered. The town was festively decorated for the holidays; I've posted photos of that on a previous occasion.

In the morning we ruminated about moving along, but learned our friends Dorsey and Bruce aboard Esmeralde were offshore en route to Fernandina Beach, and that sealed the deal about staying put another day. We met them on the dock at dinner time and strolled over to Pablo's, an excellent Mexican place close to the marina. I'm normally a draft beer guy when it comes to Mexican food, but I could not resist going in with them on a pitcher of Margaritas, an indulgent luxury.

Steaming upriver on an uncharacteristically calm St Johns, approaching the elegant Dames Point Bridge.

Thursday we weighed anchor on a high rising tide and made the very short jaunt up to the Oyster Bay Yacht Club, one of the reciprocal clubs where we get a free night every month. We learned on our last visit to arrive at high slack, and we were close enough to make spinning around and tying up (map) comfortable. We had a very nice dinner fireside in their dining room, something we had to forego on our previous visit because we were still recovering from COVID.

Since our last visit, Jacksonville now sports a museum ship, the USS Orleck, permanently moored near the Hyatt. The pocket cruise ships tie up between her and the very pointy sculpture at right.

Friday morning we dropped lines on a rising tide, just as soon as there was enough depth for a comfortable exit over the shallow bar at the marina entrance. That gave us mostly fair tide all the way to the St Johns, where we rode the flood as far as we could in the daylight. We dropped the hook in a new anchorage for us, between Blount and Marsh Islands on a side channel off the river (map). We learned there is a restaurant with a dock right there on Marsh Island, but we opted to just eat aboard as planned.

A dawn start on Saturday let us catch the very last of the flood and ride it all the way to downtown Jacksonville, where we tied up at the spiffy new Landings dock (map). Long-time readers may remember we've been at the predecessor to these docks several times, watching them deteriorate with each successive storm. The Jacksonville Landings restaurant and retail complex was razed a couple of years ago (before the dock renovation), and so this dock is now adjacent to nothing more than an empty field masquerading as a city park, and a stretch of the Northbank Riverwalk.

Louise poses with the holiday tree in Johnson Park, about the only feature of Jacksonville Landing, its former holiday location, that we miss.

That suited us just fine, because the Landings was a noisy place, especially on weekends, and attracted a lot of characters who would stare at or snark about the boat. None of the restaurants was good enough for us to miss them. We immediately knocked out our first errand, carting a giant box of quilts in our little blue folding wagon to the UPS store for shipping.

The only shot I managed of the dozens and dozens of people wandering around town in Alice in Wonderland garb. Not just the foreground -- more are across the street on both sides.

On our way back we opted to walk through the James Weldon Johnson Park, where we found the city's huge holiday tree that formerly was erected at The Landings. We also spotted numerous people dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland, walking around in groups or as families. It was very odd; we finally learned it was an electronic treasure-hunt of sorts run by "Clued Up Games," and happens once a month or so.

Our final "ready for pickup" notice from Amazon came in while we were walking to UPS, and after lunch I went back out stag and walked the 3/4 mile to the transit center where the Amazon locker is located. On a weekday I could have taken the free Skyway two stops and saved myself a half mile. I managed to just barely fit all the loot, four lockers' worth, into my backpack. In the evening we walked over to one of our favorites, Thai restaurant Indochine.

American Star coming through the Main Street Bridge after leaving her berth last Saturday, as seen from our spot on the dock. Today we passed her in this same spot under way.

We had managed to wrap up all our downtown errands -- the ones that sent us to the Landings dock in the first place -- on our very first day. But the city allows us three days at the free docks, and while we could also have gotten free power by moving downriver a mile to Metropolitan Park, we decided to just spend another couple of nights downtown while the weather was pleasant. Sunday and Monday nights make for sparse dining choices; we chose the bar at Morton's Steakhouse, which has a very reasonable happy hour menu, and Spliff's Gastropub, an order-at-the-counter affair with decent food and some drafts.

We've found locks all over town, but this is the mother load of love locks, the pedestrian overpass known as "the corkscrew" over the FEC tracks.

Sunday I took the e-bike down to the Publix for some provisions and to see what was new along the waterfront. I stayed on the Riverwalk most of the way and discovered that, since our last stay, the city has added two more free docks on the north bank. One is adjacent to the YMCA and thus a short walk to groceries at the Fresh Market, and a handful of restaurants in the Riverside neighborhood. The Y sells a day pass for $15 that provides use of all the facilities including pools, gym, locker rooms, and showers; two towels included.

The other dock is on the opposite side of the I-95 bridge, at the foot of Post street, making it a very easy walk to the nice Five Points restaurant district. Long-time readers will know we've dined there many a time, walking over from the free Brooklyn Landing dock, but last year the city posted that dock as only allowed during the Saturday Riverside Arts Market under the bridge. The dock is still thus posted, but they've removed the padlock from the gate. The newer dock is larger and more convenient.

The new dock near the Y, with Baptist Hospital in the background. We'd be anchored there in a few days.

One of my Amazon goodies was a replacement battery for my phone, whose original battery has swollen to the point the back cover would not stay all the way on without extra glue. Of course I managed to break that glass cover removing it for the battery replacement, owing to that extra glue. I have another cover replacement in my future. Another goody was a smart plug for the Starlink that will turn it off overnight to save battery, which can be overridden from the network.

The new dock at the foot of Post Street. Both are day use only.

Tuesday morning we dropped lines on a fair tide for the Florida Yacht club just a few miles upriver, another of our reciprocal clubs offering a free night. We opted to wait till Tuesday so we could have dinner, and our plan was to arrive in the afternoon and put a scooter down so I could ride the fifteen miles or so to our mail service in Green Cove Springs and pick up our packages.

Those packages included ten cellular shades, replacements for all the belowdecks portlight shades as well as the remaining three main deck shades, completing our update to "cordless" style blinds. The nine year old Bali models I installed shortly after we bought the boat were showing their age, and I've replaced the operating cords and parts of the mechanisms more than once.

This lineup of food trucks downtown is filing the lunch void left by the Landings.

I'm no stranger to loading up the scooter with all manner of cumbersome items, and the blinds would just ride cross-ways on the floorboards, relegating my feet to the passenger pegs, an arrangement I've used dozens of times. My last in-person visit to the mail drop was to pick up the Starlink terminal in its giant box, riding there and back from the free dock in Vilano Beach. The yacht club docks made the trip shorter and easier than the other option, the city docks at Metropolitan Park.

Lunchtime music in Johnson Park, and another food truck.

While we were still at the Landings dock, long-time acquaintance and prolific boating journalist Peter Swanson, who lives in Green Cove Springs, got wind of my plan, and offered instead to pick up our mail and drive it down to us in an actual automobile. That sounded a lot easier than the floorboard trick, and so we added Peter and Margaret to the dinner reservation and made arrangements with the mail service to release our mail.

We've corresponded online a bit, but it's been nearly a decade since we met, almost in passing, in person. That was at a couple of Trawlerfest events, perhaps the last two or three shows we attended. Peter was heading up Passagemaker Magazine at the time, and we had progressed to only buying lunch and cocktail reception tickets and bumming free passes to the exhibits. We had long since stopped buying the seminars that were so important to us early on, which, by this time, we could teach.

Florida Yacht Club. The docks in this photo were destroyed by the double whammy of Ian and Nicole.

We arrived at the yacht club at high tide, which, there, is just a foot. We needed all the help we could get in their silted-in basin. We were tied alongside the T-head (map) before 11am, which gave us plenty of time to take on water, get the laundry done, and wrap up other dockside chores before dinner. Peter arrived around 5:30 and we met up in the bar. We had a very nice dinner and enjoyed getting to know them better. It required a dock cart to get all the mail and the new blinds back to the boat after dinner.

Downtown Jacksonville as seen from the club, over a very calm river.

Th yacht club is very nice, but there's nothing else there, and without need of going anywhere on the scooter, we did not feel the need to pay for any nights beyond our one included one. And so it was that Wednesday morning we came down here to our very familiar anchorage. We've been here four nights, and have very much enjoyed the new docks, which have made tendering ashore much more convenient. 

The new Post Street dock made it a short walk to another UPS store with more quilts, and dinner three nights in a row in the Five Points neighborhood. In addition to old stand-bys 904 Tacos, which has enormous draft beers, and Mossfire Grill, we finally tried out River & Post, just steps from the dock, and found it quite good. The patio is a bit close to the street, but we're back to eating outside whenever we can. They also have a rooftop bar, but the food menu is limited.

Jacksonville is full of murals. This one is on a support column for the Skyway people-mover.

Wednesday night was the occultation of Mars by the Moon, and I had a great view directly overhead with my binoculars. Here in Florida is was not really an occultation, but rather an appulse, which is a very close but not coincident alignment. I don't have a camera that could capture any part of it.

Sunset from our suspicious anchorage.

Another place that happens to be just a block away from the new Post Street dock is the Parisian Spa Institute, and Thursday we headed over for $30, one-hour massages performed by students in the massage therapy program. (One can also get hair or nails done here for cheap.) The massages were quite good, and in a much more spa-like setting than many student massages we've had in the past. I can highly recommend the place.

We availed ourselves of the much closer new dock adjacent to the YMCA a couple of times. There are a few casual restaurants here, but more importantly I was able to get gas for the tender just a few blocks away, and pick up a few groceries at the very upscale but well-stocked Fresh Market grocery store. I was also able to walk a half mile from here back to the Amazon locker to pick up a new back glass for my phone.

Out of the blue someone posted this photo of Vector at anchor to one of my Facebook groups, and a discussion ensued. Very suspicious. Photo: Todd Linton

I spent a good part of two days installing the ten new blinds. It's never as simple as just removing one and installing another; differences in the size and shape of the headrails and the brackets had me in the workshop fabricating shims, and contorting my body into unnatural positions to drill new holes for the new brackets. They look and work fine, if not up to the standards of the name-brand items they replaced, but it's very nice to be rid of the cords. They were also less expensive, remarkable considering cordless models were a high-end luxury a decade ago at double what we spent on the corded models.

Our plotter tracks are testament to how much time we've spent here.

Yesterday was cold and bleak and we mostly had a quiet day at home, other than the aforementioned gas and milk run. I used the time to catch up on blog comments and back emails. Last night for our final meal we tendered through the railroad bridge at the small boat span and back to the Landings dock for a short walk to Cowford's Chop House. We remembered they had a reasonably-priced bar menu, but that was apparently a victim of the pandemic, and we settled for 20% off appetizers for happy hour. Still a good deal, and it's a lovely bar.

Update: We are anchored off Marsh Island in the Blount Island Channel (map), a short distance from where we anchored on our way upriver. We have the place to ourselves this time. Before I could finish the post it was time to weigh anchor on the last of the flood for the short ride down to Metropolitan Park, where we hoped to use the pumpout and thus needed the flood to come alongside to port. I had to do-si-do with the pocket cruise ship American Star, which had just left the downtown dock for a week-long cruise up the St. Johns.

Dinner at the well-spaced bar at Cowfords, on a cold evening.

The pumpout turned out to be inoperative, so we simply waited for the tide to change to continue downriver. In the interim I offloaded the ten old blinds into the trash, and wandered the docks with my electrical tester to see if any of the 50-amp receptacles still worked. I found nary a one working. Since our last visit they jacked up and carted off the historic firehouse containing the fire museum, relocating it several blocks west, and have torn up half the park for some sort of development.

A new sighting for us on our way downriver: an LNG-powered Ro-Ro car carrier being fueled by LNG "bunker" barge Clean Canaveral and her pin-boat, Polaris.

We dropped lines with the tide and cruised another hour and a half here, at one point with nearly four knots behind us. We had the hook down at 5:15 and immediately splashed the tender to try out the Palms Fish Camp restaurant nearby. We both had variations of the local Mayfield shrimp, which were quite good.

In the morning we have an early start to catch the last of the ebb down to the ICW, where we will turn south for St. Augustine. I expect to be anchored in Vilano Beach tomorrow evening. Next on the agenda is to figure out where we'll be on Christmas, so I can try to make some dinner reservations.