This was our first stop after Green Cove Springs and we docked effortlessly for the first time ever at the Landing, on August 27th, 2009. This was pretty much a mall with restaurants and live music on the weekends. We didn't stay here very long because there are no facilities to shower and the bathrooms are locked when the businesses are closed. We just used the loo in the cabin at night when needed. We enjoyed eating at the Japanese restaurant Koja Sushi, which is supposed to be the #1 sushi restaurant in Jacksonville. We ate tempura udon, dragon roll, and Koja roll, which was quite tasty. Docking at The Landing was free and you were allowed to stay a max of 2/3 days at a time. Another bad thing is that anyone could walk up to your boat so we had to make sure we locked it down tight when we left it. We felt safe while we were on the boat as we were armed with a shotgun. We never needed it, but it gave us peace of mind with all the people walking around at night. There is nothing spectacular about Jacksonville downtown, but it was nice to get a change in scenery. We set off again to travel to Jacksonville Beach next. We saw our first dolphin and pink flamingo on the ICW as we traveled to Jax Beach. We docked at Beach Marine and found the wet slips to be very tight spaces and difficult to maneuver into with our sailboat. We learned at this time our transmission was bad when we threw it into reverse the engine stopped and wouldn't start back up until much too late. We rammed the bow into the corner of a dock, which luckily didn't do much damage to our boat (just a chunk missing from the thickest part of our hull) and no damage to the dock or any other vessel. It was embarrassing to say the least, but we had lost control of our boat without our engine running. We were worried our engine died, but it started back up and so we were relieved. We found the facilities at Beach Marine were mediocre with the bathrooms that had both the toilet & shower in the same room with no way to utilize both at the same time so if someone was in the shower, you couldn't use the restroom and vice-versa. But it was good there was just a code you had to punch in to enter and there was a place to put your shower stuff. Green Cove Springs (GCS) was better in that you could use the restrooms and still have the shower available. You also didn't need a key to get in to those bathrooms at GCS. Beach Marine also had free wi-fi so that was nice for our internet addiction, but it was very expensive at $70/night. Needless to say, we didn't stay more than 2 days. We rode our foldable bikes to the beach and picked up some groceries on our second day. I was attacked by mosquitoes and found myself very swollen due to the poison injected by the insects as they took my blood. It took a while to get the swelling to go down even with my detox oil. We learned to not traveled on the ICW during the weekend due to all the powerboats causing many big wakes that threw us around as we could not go very fast with our 20 hp Lister diesel engine. All the wakes from the powerboats erode the banks of the ICW, which cause shoaling and the bottom of the ICW to change frequently. We could see the plants and trees that were uprooted by the wakes as we traveled.
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