Florida, Jacksonville/Green Cove Springs – Hunting for a place to hide for hurricane season

Well we have made it to the area we think we want to ‘hang out’ for the hurricane season.  It should be safe so far inland and well up the large St.Johns River.

Now we have to find an anchorage, mooring or berth in the river somewhere.

Not so easy!

But before we rush off, while we have a free berth right in the centre of town, it would be nice to have a look around Jacksonville.

The town centre itself is a bit ‘boring’.  Financial business high-rises, multi-story car parks and wide pavements.  There is a top floor restaurant with a view of the city and a library with an impressive art collection.  You need to take a city bus to the outskirts of town to get to any of the shopping districts and malls.  The busses are cheap at $1.50 and are air-conditioned.

Not into high-rises and shopping?  Well the city has done a fine job in making lovely walking paths along the river side.  You can easily take a walking tour right from the berth at Jacksonville Landing.

As you walk along the river you have to marvel at how they have tackled the problem of getting traffic across the river while keeping the waterways navigable for boats.  For motor vehicles it is easy.  Build a bridge, but make it tall enough for most boats to pass under.  Do note: bridges further up the river and on many of the tributaries are much lower and impassable for sailboats.  But in this section of the river they have done their best to keep the waterways navigable.

Making bridges for trains to cross the river is a much more difficult problem.  Especially when you consider that they do not tackle tight turns, or steep accents and descents very well.  You also have to factor in the huge weights they carry.  For that reason Jacksonville built a raising bridge to tackle their train crossing problems.  And what a monster this bridge is.  We were lucky enough to capture some pictures of it in action on our walk.

As you walk along the riverside you will come to lots of parks, all very dog friendly…as long as I am on the lead.  Always a compromise to be made.

There are also some art galleries and museums.  Check with the local tourist office, as many have free afternoon or evening times for visitors.

As you make your way west of the city centre there are more parks separated now by lovely residential areas. The whole area had a warm comfortable feel…or perhaps it was the weather.  Judge for yourself.

After our lovely river side walk, and forays on Jacksonville’s bus system, we thought it would be best to rent a car for a day to explore up the river further and visit the selection of yards and marinas available.

We used the free, but slow, internet available to mooring boats at Jacksonville Landing to get the addresses and directions to a variety of places we could take the boat for the season.  We also used the internet to get a cheaper day rental deal then what is available at car rental offices.  Luckily most will let you pick up/drop off the car at the local hotels in the centre of town, walking distance away.

Off we went to waste a day being hugely disappointed.  Why you ask?  The internet descriptions of each place where wildly over exaggerated.  The reality, when we visited these places, was a great disappointment.  Only one place we visited was anything like what was described on-line.

Mind you, my humans did have a long check list that needed to be filled.  While they were happy to ‘hang out on the hook’ for free last season, circumstances this season demanded they find a berth a bit more secure in bad weather.  They also had a long list of jobs that had built up over the last 2 years of cruising on the boat.  They hoped to find some place that let them live on the boat, let them work on the boat themselves (for insurance reasons, some places only let contractors, with their own personal insurance, work on boats) with the option of water, for cleaning jobs, and electrics, for power tools.

And do not forget me!  They wanted to find someplace with a safe area for me to go for a walk, or even better, a place for me to chase a ball off the lead.

Like I said, they did have a long check list.

So I guess it was not surprising that they found most of the places they visited ‘lacking’.  Most were nothing more than a collection of docks on the side of the river.  Of these, most were too shallow for our boat.  Those deep enough could only offer berths on the outer docks, awash and unsafe in a storm, they were inappropriate for ‘live-aboards’.  We found one place with a safe berth, but it was very run down, no shade anywhere and they wanted too much money for the privilege of tying our lines to a piece of wood.

We went to the ‘famous’ Green Cove Springs Marina.  Wish I took a picture, because you would ‘pee yourself’ laughing.  It is a plot of land, right off the highway, between two derelict industrial docks.  They did set up a floating dock, along the shoreline between the industrial docks, but that was filled with permanent live-aboards who make a living working on the boats lifted out oin the gravel yard.  Out from this dock they have set up a series of mooring balls.  They assured us these were hurricane safe and were a reasonable rate to rent for the season.  We have never been really keen on trusting mooring balls, rather than our own ground tackle, especially if a storm gets up.  But there was no roam left for us to anchor in.  It was economical, but it had no water, no electrics, no security and no public transport to anything.  You were going to have to rely on the generosity of your neighbour to get any supplies you needed, even basic groceries.  Dogs welcome as long as they stay on a lead.

Why did the humans take me away from the Caribbean?

Feeling a little disappointed they humans stopped into the town of Green Cove Springs for a look.  It was a fair drive, down a highway, so you can forget about bicycling.  It did have a grocery store and a basic hardware store.  And interestingly enough an actual spring.

The town has gone ‘one step’ further and built a pool so people can safely swim in the fresh spring water.  Cool, literally!

Anyway, back to the hunt for somewhere to stay.

The humans discussed the option of Green Cove Springs Marina and decided that it would be a good place to go when they needed to lift the boat out of the water and complete work on the underneath of the boat, but a bad place to do the majority of projects that could be completed while the boat was in the water.  The hunt continued.

The final marina they visited was Ortega Landing.

http://www.ortegalanding.com/marina-at-ortega-landing.php

They had not really considered this marina because it exceeded their budget.  But they stopped in on the way back to Jacksonville anyway.

I will not lye.  The place was very nice.  It was newly built and just starting to fill up with boats.  There was security at every pontoon.  Nice new air-conditioned toilets and showers.  Three communal BBQ areas with ice machines, all free .  Air-conditioned laundry room with free washers and driers.  Free unlimited water at the dock and electrics at $0.12/unit.  Free fast internet at your boat.  An out-door pool, whirl spa and shaded seating area.  A large upstairs club house, air-conditioned, with cable TV, fireplace, full kitchen and plenty of indoor and outdoor balcony seating.  The internet in the club house is even faster then at the boat.  And best of all, for the humans, they were fine with you working on your own boat as long as you did it during ‘sociable’ hours and cleaned up your mess.   The best part for me was the doggy play area.  A great big safe grassy area with lots of poo picking stations.  The place was also set in a nice quiet residential area that offered shaded walks.  Two blocks away is a shopping mall with pharmacies, grocery stores and a West Marine.  Next door is a ship yard with trades people and a Sailors Exchange store.  The marina has bikes they lend for free, with hard saddle bags for carrying things.

The place was very, very lovely.  But could we validate the expense.  Would we save enough in propane, laundry, ice and transportation to even out? Would it be more economical to take a mooring ball at Green Cove Springs.  We needed to sleep on it.

So back to Jacksonville Landing we went to return the car and decide.

Of course we were going to need some water soon to get all the bird poo off the boat from the nightly return of birds to their roosts in the parks beside us.

A picture really does not do it justice, so I tried to capture it on film.

We went to sleep worrying what was the best thing to do.

With our free nights all used up, the humans needed to move on.

What will they decide?