| 📅 Friday, September 25, 2026 Weekend Edition | Fernandina Beach ☀️ 77°/64° |
Saturday is sunny and 79 and the surf is too rough to swim, so the beach is for looking at. Look at it around 7 Saturday evening, when the Harvest Moon comes up out of the ocean.
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| 🎉 | This Weekend |
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Fri
25
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Story & Song, 1430 Park Ave. • 5 p.m. • Soprano Amy Shoremount-Obra with pianist Felix Jarrar, $40, cash bar. The nine-singer Bosland competition is Saturday at noon (venue and tickets at ameliaislandopera.org), and her donation-based master class is back at Story & Song on Sunday at 11 a.m.
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Fri
25
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Pirates host West Nassau
Fernandina Beach High, 435 Citrona Dr. • Kickoff 7 p.m. • A district game and the second Friday night in the rebuilt stadium; tickets through GoFan. If you are downtown first, the 4th Friday Art Gallery Tour has the galleries and makers’ studios open 5 to 8, with the artists in the room
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Sat
26
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Inside the fort at Fort Clinch State Park, 2601 Atlantic Ave. • 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. • Cars and trucks built before 2001 parked inside the brick walls, put on by Auto Legends Amelia and the Friends of Fort Clinch, who call it the only historic federal fort anywhere that hosts a car show. The show is free; park entry ($6 a car) and $2.50 fort admission apply
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Sat
26
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Oktoberfest on Second Street
South Second Street downtown, around PJD’s Beer and Wine Garden at 12 S. Second St. • 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. • Second year of the block party PJD’s started last September: free and all ages, with live music through the day, German food from local vendors, a stein-holding contest and costumes encouraged. The car show ends at 2, so the two fit in one day
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Sat
26
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Atlantic Recreation Center, 2500 Atlantic Ave. • Sensory hour noon to 1, festival 1 to 4 p.m. • Free games, prizes and treats from the city’s Parks and Recreation department. The pumpkin patch floats in the pool: $2 a ticket for a 30-minute slot to wade in and pick one, booked ahead on the city’s registration site. No open swimming that day
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Sat
26
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Downtown Saturday: both markets, and the library’s last Saturday
Farmers Market on North Seventh Street and the Arts Market at 506 Centre St., 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; the library at 25 N. Fourth St., 10 to 6 • Fourth Saturday, so both markets run and the Wildlight market is off until Oct. 3. From Oct. 1 the Fernandina Beach branch is closed on Saturdays, which makes tomorrow the last one, so return the books and load up
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Sun
27
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Amelia Community Theatre, 207 Cedar St. • 2 to 4 p.m. • The Amelia Island Book Festival’s fall author event: the New York Times bestseller on her new novel “Meet Me in Paris,” in conversation with local author Savannah Carlisle. Tickets through the festival’s site
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Sun
27
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Amelia River Waterfront Park, 123 S. Front St. • 7 to 9 p.m. • Free, and the last of the city’s summer Sunday concerts, with food, vendors, chairs from Rip Tide for a $5 donation and Keep Nassau Beautiful’s water refill station. The sun goes down over the river at 7:16 and the moon comes up behind you at 7:43; bring a jacket, it is 65 by the end
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| 🍽️ | Try This |
The surf is the reason to stay out of the water this weekend, and it is also the reason to go and look at it. Saturday’s full moon is the Harvest Moon, the one that falls closest to the fall equinox, and it rises out of the Atlantic at 7:11 p.m., six minutes before the sun sets behind you, with 6-to-9-foot breakers still running underneath it. Here is the part most people do not know: near the Harvest Moon the moon comes up only about half an hour later each night instead of the usual 50 minutes, which is why farmers got a run of bright evenings at harvest time and why this works three nights in a row, Friday at 6:42 and Sunday at 7:43 as well as Saturday. Our pick is Seaside Park on South Fletcher, because it has parking, restrooms and a gate the city keeps open until 9, but any stretch of the Main Beach boardwalk does the job. Look for Saturn, the steady point of light just below the moon, and bring a jacket; it is the first 62-degree night of the season.
📍 Seaside Park, 2020 S. Fletcher Ave. (gate open 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.), or Main Beach • Moonrise 7:11 p.m. Saturday, sunset 7:17 • Stay on the sand: the rip current statement runs through 2 a.m. Sunday
| 📰 | In Case You Missed It |
The presentation the Tourist Development Council would have heard Wednesday, before its meeting was cancelled, projects bed-tax collections of about $12.28 million for the fiscal year, 2.6 percent above last year and 6.5 percent over the $11.54 million budget, with August still an estimate. Underneath the number, hotel occupancy slipped to 66 percent from 67.2 while the average room rate rose 6 percent to $330, and vacation rentals, at 54 percent of collections through July, now bring in more of the tax than the hotels do. The fall is mixed: as of Sept. 15, hotel bookings were running 10 percent ahead of last year for September and 12 percent ahead for November, but 13 percent behind for October, while vacation rentals were 34 percent ahead for this month. The council does not meet again until Oct. 7, so these are the numbers until then.
Read More → Fernandina ObserverMary Louise Hester, president of the Friends of the Fernandina Beach Library, told the Observer that people were waiting outside for the doors to open last Saturday and none of them knew the Saturday hours end Oct. 1, and that many of them live off the island, because the Fernandina branch was the only county library open on Saturdays at all. The schedule stands as we reported Wednesday: no Saturdays in Fernandina from Oct. 1, Yulee open Monday through Wednesday only, and Bryceville closing Oct. 29 with an outdoor locker for holds. Two dates came out of the piece. On Tuesday, Oct. 6, at 2 p.m., the Fernandina branch hosts a free, nonpartisan information session on Amendment 3, the November property tax question the county has tied its cuts to, with Commission Chair Alyson McCullough taking questions, and the Friends’ twice-yearly book sale runs Nov. 4 to 7. Monday’s 5:01 p.m. hearing in Yulee is still the last vote that can change any of this.
Read More → Fernandina ObserverThe 12th Dickens on Centre runs Friday through Sunday, Dec. 11 to 13, downtown, and the festival itself is free, Action News Jax reported Thursday night. The pieces regulars will recognize are all back: the market enclaves (Oliver’s Alley, Cratchit’s Corner, Peddler’s Village and Artist’s Alley), Tiny Tim’s kids’ zone with St. Nick, holiday movies in the Old Vic alley, the Run Like the Dickens mile at Main Beach in Victorian dress, the Parade of Paws with a Looks Most Like Owner category, the glowing procession with a drone show, and the adults-only Dickens After Dark: Marley’s Masquerade. The paid extras are reservable spots in the Enchanted Village snow globes and Fezziwig’s Courtyard. It is 11 weeks out on a 79-degree weekend, which feels early, and it is about when the ticketed pieces start to go.
Read More → Action News Jax| 📌 | Briefly Noted |
- Big surf: a high surf advisory with 6-to-9-foot breakers runs until 2 a.m. Saturday, and the rip current statement holds through 2 a.m. Sunday. Look, do not swim.
- Monday’s county budget hearing, 5:01 p.m. in Yulee, is the last vote on the library and nonprofit lines; the draft Harbor Master Plan follows at 6 at City Hall.
- Coastal Tea Cafe opens Thursday, Oct. 1, at 27 S. Fifth St. downtown, with a chamber ribbon cutting at 10 a.m.; artisan tea and a used-book nook stocked with the library.
- Last weekend of Dining Month: the 23 set-price menus run through Wednesday, Sept. 30, and then they are gone until next September.
- JEA, which has customers on the Yulee and Wildlight side of the county, adjusts rates Oct. 1: Action News Jax puts a typical electric bill down about $8.70 a month and water and sewer up $5.75.
Saturday’s Harvest Moon comes up out of the ocean a few minutes before the sun goes down. Everybody who has lived here a while has a spot for that, on the island or across the river. Where is yours, and who do you bring? Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.
Pat Foster-Turley’s column this morning comes from a beach in Belize buried in sargassum, the same floating weed the hatchlings that left our beach this summer are swimming out to find. It grows in a sea named for it. What is strange about that sea’s borders?
Answer: The Sargasso Sea has no coastline. It is the only sea on Earth bounded entirely by currents rather than land: the Gulf Stream on the west, the North Atlantic Current to the north, the Canary Current to the east and the North Atlantic Equatorial Current to the south. Loggerhead hatchlings from Amelia Island ride the Gulf Stream out to its floating mats and hide in them until their shells harden, which is why a seaweed problem in Belize is, a few hundred miles upstream, our turtles’ nursery.
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Fernandina Beach, FL 32034