Harbortown, north of Jacksonville - at a dock

Nice condos right on the ICW

We came through some very skinny water on the way here, much more so than I expected. One of these days I hope they do some serious dredging. On the plus side, I did see two dredgers set up this afternoon and one was actually working. Even with a 4' 9" draft, there were places today where I would have been aground in the channel at low tide. With a 3 foot tide, I made it through okay.

A setting sun, a palm tree - we're down south!

We've always stopped at Harbortown just north of Jacksonville. It's a community of condo owners that rent out their slips to transients. However, they've had a bad experience with a couple of people in boats. Some skipped out without paying dockage and another couple found something to trip on and sued the marina for $5000! Now Florida is a no fault state for insurance and $5000 isn't enough to recover lawyer's fees to challenge so they paid the claim. The really sad thing is that it was all a scam. A few are preying on small marinas like Harbortown for cash so now the marina is no longer accepting transients. This is very sad that the irresponsible behavior of a few is affecting the majority. Why can't people just be honest?! I know of one other marina just south of here where the same thing happened to them. They are by an anchorage area and they allowed people to tie up to their docks to get to shore. No more. Someone sued them over some supposed tripping problem so their response was to put up signs that boaters are not welcomed to dock their dinghies any longer! It's disgusting!

Luckily, the dockmaster here knows us so we were accepted in for the night but all others were turned away.  It's a perfectly protected marina and we'll be calm here for the night. We're aiming for Ft Matanzas on Saturday as the weather here starts to warm up, only in the low 70's today.