Jacksonville Beach

St. Augustine to Palm Cove Marina, Jacksonville Beach, FL - July 18, 2016

Miles Today: 27.9 NM
Total Miles:  231.2 NM

Jim’s sister Donna drove down from Jacksonville, along with Jim’s niece, Heather and husband, Chris.  Donna was going to spend the night on board and travel with us up the ICW to Jacksonville Beach the next day.  Our first overnight guest, as well as our first guest cruiser!

We spent the morning cleaning the boat, doing laundry, topping off the water tanks.  They arrived after lunch and we spent a lovely afternoon onboard, catching up and giving them a tour of Bazinga.   Late afternoon we took their car around the corner to Kingfish Grill for an early dinner (yes, it’s still so hot that even a short walk isn’t very tempting – and our guests are native Floridians!).

Donna said she slept great on the convertible settee (table drops down, cushions go on top).  She loves boats and water and is game for almost anything.

Left the marina around 8am and we knew immediately that we had left the bustle of St. Augustine tourists behind.  We were the only boat around as we cruised quietly up the wide waterway surrounded by marshes and birds.   Jim rushed around and got his camera to capture the beauty and was surprised that the birds on the shore were wild flamingos.

Marshes, trees, birds

Wild Flamingos?!

We had started out driving from the pilothouse, but soon moved up to the flybridge to give Donna the full experience.  The scenery was really beautiful and we enjoyed it even more because we rarely saw another boat.

Nobody but us enjoying the ICW

Donna, on her way to her captain's license!

As we neared, Jacksonville Beach, the clouds got a little more threatening but stayed on the horizon thankfully.   We must have spent at least an hour cruising through a channel of McMansions along Roscoe Blvd – literally cruising past peoples’ backyards.  According to Donna, this area south of Jacksonville was an older community of relatively modest homes.  Well, it was obvious people have realized they’d like to have a house on the ICW – a big house!  Every once in awhile, we’d see one of the older homes tucked between two huge edifices.

South of Jacksonville Beach, along Roscoe Blvd.  Many new McMansions with private docks.

Four and a half hours after we began, we were approaching Palm Cove Marina.  The homework we did the night before indicated we could encounter turbulence under the Beach Blvd Bridge right before our turn into the marina.  Also, the channel to the marina could be very shallow at low tide.  We had timed it to arrive near high tide.  Well, it turned out to be not high enough.  There definitely was turbulence under the bridge, but Jim goosed the throttle a bit and we were through.  We made our turn into the channel, it started to rain and our eyes were darting between the very narrow channel, the 3 boats coming out of the marina and our depth sounder.   There was a brief moment when we had 1 foot under our keel, but then it evened out to 3-3.5 feet all the way to the pump-out dock.

We had forgotten how forceful and loud Florida thunderstorms can be!  While Rich Davis, wonderful dockmaster, was helping us pump out, there were two HUGE claps of thunder.  Rich calmly joked, “Sure glad you guys didn’t want any fuel.”

Palm Cove Marina, Jacksonville Beach, FL
We actually came from the south into the channel.

Late afternoon, Mark came by to welcome us to Jax.  Georgia celebrated her birthday at the snazzy restaurant next door to the marina - Marker 32.  We enjoyed top-notch service and food and Jim, Donna and Mark even sang “Happy Birthday.” 

Enough to share!

Another great end to a very special day.

Note to Donna:  Loved having you cruise with us, Sista!  Let’s do it again soon!