Monday got off to a pretty sweet start...entered the St. John’s River from the sea on a flood tide and called ahead to Mulberry Cove Marina on NAS Jacksonville to ensure they had a transient spot for us so we didn’t waste a long slog up the river. Easy day, right? Well...long story short, the marina actually didn’t have a spot for us. They didn’t have a good account of what slips were open, tried to put us in one two feet too shallow for us, blamed everything on the old hurricane damage and being “the end of the road” on base, and basically told us to “too bad, so sad” as they were closing for the day. We walked by a slip that seemed pretty open and undamaged and somehow managed to talk them into letting us take it. Ended up being perfect! This isn’t the first time we have stayed here, and it’s an incredible value for military peeps, but this whole debacle was shocking. We made our comments and hope it does something to improve the management of the operation.
Once settled, we got to work! The real drivers for this stop were new ID cards for everyone, FL residency and a license for the Cap’n, mail pick-up, and provisioning. We did it all, and gave the boat a good scrub and took advantage of the free laundry. We also managed to get some birthday and Christmas presents aboard and got new snorkel gear for the kiddos.
We want to hit St. Augustine, but with the holiday next week we could only get 2 nights. We stayed out in JAX an extra night and now are headed toward St. Aug for a few nights of ICW anchoring before we get on a mooring there. It’s been a nice, relaxing, southerly journey!
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