Finally Florida, yet Fitfully Freezing

We are under way southbound on the ICW, between St. Augustine and Daytona, Florida. The weather station says it's just 43° here at 11am, and today's high is just 48° in St. Augustine. It will be slightly better in Daytona at 54°, but still too cold for our liking.

Fernandina Beach does a great job lighting the trees downtown.

Shortly after my last post we made St. Marys Inlet. The two sailboats that had left St. Simons a good bit ahead of us had to hover outside while a submarine from Kings Bay exited the inlet. By the time we arrived the sub was out near the sea buoy and we went right in. We were just a bit too early, arriving ahead of the turn of the tide, and we pushed uphill to the range lights before things slackened up. We had a fair tide for the last couple of miles to the anchorage.

This is a distant shot so you will just have to believe me when I tell you that it is a ballistic missile submarine followed by two sub tenders. Coast Guard escorts flank the photo.

We dropped the hook in one of our usual spots near the mooring field (map) in Fernandina Beach, and tendered ashore for dinner at old standby Arte Pizza. The special was a spicy meatball pizza involving home made meatballs and two kinds of hot peppers; it was delicious but plenty of draft beer was required to quench the fire. We took a little walk around the festively lit town after dinner.

Fernandina Beach and the holiday tree as seen from our anchorage.

Thursday morning we weighed anchor with the tide for the southward leg to the St. Johns River, still not sure which way we'd turn when we arrived. I reached out to our good friends Erin and Chris, who left their boat on the Ortega at the end of last season, to see if they were maybe back in town. In a stroke of incredible timing, they were driving south from Boston even as my text arrived, planning to be in Jacksonville Friday evening. That made the decision for us, and we turned upriver when we arrived at the St. Johns.

We had figured we'd run out of tide, and planned to anchor off the Palms Fish Camp across from Blount Island, a familiar stop for us. As luck would have it, we arrived at Blount Island just at the tail end of the flood, and were able to ride it all the way upriver to downtown Jacksonville. The downtown courtesy docks are still closed due to some major construction on the former site of Jacksonville Landing, so we proceeded through the railroad bridge to our usual anchorage and dropped the hook (map). Two boats were already there, including the sailboat that was there when we left in the spring.

We spotted this wild boar walking across the tidal flats at low tide this morning.

We splashed the tender and I headed ashore to scope things out and get a can of gas for the dinghy. I planned to do that from the Riverside courtesy dock, upriver of the I-95 bridge, but I found a fence across the gangway sporting a sign that the dock was closed, though I could see no obvious reason. That ruled out returning to go to the Five Points neighborhood for dinner.

Our downtown anchorage as seen from the river walk. Vector is at right, looking like a tiny cruise ship.

I ran back downriver to the new Southbank courtesy dock just downriver of the Main Street bridge, which also has access to a gas station. This dock is mostly used by the water taxi fleet, for both landing and storage, and only a small piece of the dock at each end is available for use. I was surprised to find the dock packed with people waiting for the water taxi, and when I got to the end of the gangway I found it blocked by a folding table with a woman collecting tickers. It turned out that the Gator Bowl was that evening, and the water taxis were running all evening to bring people to the game. I let the ticket-taker know my boat was on the dock and I would be passing her in the other direction.

Part of the river walk is closed where they removed a section of the pedestrian bridge over the tracks for nearby construction. Locks of love have already appeared on the fence.

After walking the Southbank neighborhood and fueling up the tender, I swung past the Brooklyn courtesy dock to make sure it was open. That's where we landed together a short while later, walking to Anejo Cucina for dinner. We kept missing this place for one reason or another since it opened, but the food turned out to be quite good and they had several drafts. We arrived just before sunset and there was nary a table where one of us would not be looking straight into it, but it was all over in a few minutes. Note to self: come after sunset, or on an overcast day.

The construction. It looks like they might be daylighting the creek.

Yet another cold snap was moving in, and I had made arrangements to move up to the Florida Yacht Club on Friday for a couple of nights, the first of which would be free with our reciprocal membership, so we could have some power and get the scooter on the ground for some errands. We planned on a leisurely morning at anchor, with a departure for the club, which has a shallow basin, for a high tide arrival.

That plan moved up a bit after morning coffee, when we discovered the head would not flush. That proved to be because the tank was full, even though we had emptied it at sea just two days earlier. I apparently neglected to close the discharge valve. That's normally not a problem, as both a check valve and the rubber pump impeller itself usually prevent any backflow, but in this case there was enough leakage that seawater had backed up into the tank, which is below the waterline. We now needed a pump-out pronto, and we weighed anchor a bit early for the one-hour trip to the club.

The collection of delivery-service toys at our mail service always amuses me.

I had to plow the mud a bit to get into one of their spiffy new floating slips (map), but the new docks have pump-out available at the slips. That business taken care of, we immediately offloaded the scooter and I set out for Green Cove Springs, where I picked up our mail and then girded myself for the tax collector, as Florida insisted I renew the scooter plate in person. The receptionist told me it was a 2-3 hour wait, but that I could do the plate at the drive-through, which was a new one on me.

The annual festival of group-decorated trees in Green Cove Springs.

I got in line on the scooter and was at the window in just ten minutes. The reason for the in-person requirement was that they wanted to replace the physical plate, which in this case was the vanity plate VECTOR2. There at the window I made the call to give up the vanity plate, lowering the fees and also allowing me to drive away with a new plate in hand, rather than having to wait for it by mail. Also, we lost enthusiasm for the personalized plates after both VECTOR1 and VECTOR3 were stolen, along with the scooters to which they were attached.

It is a bit faded. Apparently the plate itself must be replaced on a schedule.

I was finished at the tax collector in such record time that I had plenty of time to meet up with my friend Peter, a yachting journalist who lives in town. We met at the local coffee shop for a pleasant hour of catching up. I rounded out my excursion to my "home town" with a stop at the Elks Lodge, who seem to have difficulty cashing our checks (two of them have been stopped by our bank due to remaining uncashed).

Erin and Chris arrived in their whizzy new car after getting themselves squared away in their boat, Barefeet. We thought we'd just have a quiet dinner together in the bar at the club, not realizing the place would soon fill to the brim for "pot of gold" night, some sort of monthly member drawing. At least it made for a happening vibe, and we had a really good time catching up. Regular readers will know we intersected with them quite a bit on our Bahamas cruise last year, with our last visit right here in Jacksonville as we all headed north.

They widened (and painted) the sidewalk portion of the Park Street bridge and added benches, then striped the roadway for bike traffic. All motor traffic is now on the other side of the colorfully painted Jersey barrier.

Saturday morning was quite cold, and we were grateful to be plugged in to 50-amp power. I waited until the relative warmth of mid-afternoon to go back out on the scooter for some final errands, including Staples for an Amazon return and Walmart to restock provisions. I gassed up the scooter on the way home. Chris and Erin again met us for dinner, picking us up and whisking us off to the Julington Creek Fish Camp across the river. Their new Accord has seat warmers even in the back -- quite the luxury on a cold night.

Baptist Health seems to be sponsoring it all. This sign was abreast of the historic train station, now the convention center.

Sunday morning I strolled the property before decking the scooter. The club renovations are moving right along, and I think the lovely new pool deck and bar will be finished by our next visit. We topped up the water tank and went into the club when they opened at 11:30 for brunch, since we had to wait on tide anyway. We dropped lines at 1pm with a foot of tide for the short trip back downriver to the anchorage. We dropped the hook in a more comfortable spot (map) to await the arrival of some final Amazon deliveries to the downtown locker.

New trail signage with map. I assume there will be other colors of trails eventually.

When those deliveries still had not arrived by dinner time, we decided to spend the night, splashed the tender, and headed ashore at the Brooklyn dock, where Erin and Chris met us one final time for dinner at Fired Up Pizza, one of our collective favorites. They swung us by the Amazon Locker on the way home, and I picked up what had already been delivered, but the final two packages had yet to arrive.

We were comfortably back aboard when the delivery notice came in around 8pm. I ruminated about going back ashore for the half-hour walk to the locker and back so we could get an earlier start in the morning, but decided to save it for the daylight, even though it would be colder in the morning. It was also a lot windier, and I had to bash my way ashore. I found Park Street all torn up on the Brooklyn side, and there is now a nice pedestrian area along with a two-way bike path on the Park Street Bridge, occupying the former southbound traffic lanes, with the former northbound lanes now marked for two-way vehicle traffic. The bridge is part of the "Emerald" walking trail. On my return trip I was able to cut through the convention center in the historic train station.

We passed CG cutter Hammer, a towboat with-permanently attached spud barge, doing ATON maintenance in San Pablo Creek. Later they overtook us on the Tolomato River. We passed them again today.

We decked the tender and weighed anchor immediately after I returned, which still gave us a fair tide most of the way downriver. We again had the tide with us all the way through Pablo Creek. Right after we made the turn off the river, a forecast windstorm arrived with a vengeance, and I drove the rest of the day in crosswinds ranging from 20 to 55 mph. That qualifies as Force 7 or "Severe Gale," but apart from the stabilizers not being able to keep us fully level, Vector had no problem with it. We were certainly more comfortable than we would have been had we remained at anchor.

I snapped this when it registered 51mph steady, 51 max (44kt). Later the max crept up to 55.

We arrived to Vilano Beach just as the high wind advisory was expiring, but still we set the hook in 20 knots in our customary spot (map). We waited a while for things to abate, but lost patience and splashed the tender to bash our way ashore for dinner. We walked out to Surfside, which has finished its transition from a former Italian joint to a beach-bar menu, which is not nearly as appealing. They do still have a pizza oven, but we just had pizza the night before. As long as we were there, we popped into Publix next door before walking back. Things had calmed down further but the ride was still choppy and we decked the tender when we arrived.

This classic historic motor hotel had been a group of run-down apartments on our previous visits, with the old 50s-era neon sign still street-side out front. They've been completely remodeled as long/short term rentals complete with period porch chairs out front.

I'm glad we did because the temperatures kissed the freezing point last night, and it was still in the 30s when we got up this morning. We've been running all day with the engine room door open to get a little warmth belowdecks. We were hoping for a spot at the Halifax River Yacht Club tonight for more power, but it looks like they are full up and we'll be in the anchorage in Daytona instead.

The historic Haley's Court sign was also restored and I liked it against the sunset, even if it's overexposed here.

I was finally able to get some doctor appointments in Palm Beach on the 15th, so that's now our target. Tomorrow we should be in the Indian River Lagoon, and Thursday in Eau Gallie. I am hoping we'll be a little warmer once south of the cape.

Update: I called the yacht club a half hour out and they had a last-minute cancellation; we pulled into the basin at a high tide of a whopping 6" and plowed the mud over to the face dock. I had a struggle to get the boat lined up between the 20kt wind and the muddy bottom, but we are tied up (map). We walked over to Little Italy for dinner straight away, as tonight is "ticket Tuesday" in the club bar, and "pot of gold" was enough for one month (we've been through the similar ticket Tuesday in the past).