Two coastal alerts are up this morning: a High Surf Advisory for Coastal Nassau until 10 a.m. Tuesday, with breaking waves of 5 to 8 feet and localized beach erosion, and a high rip current risk through late Wednesday night. The forecasters also expect minor tidal flooding around the high tides along the coast and the Intracoastal into midweek. Today is mostly sunny and 70 on the island, 72 inland, under a north wind gusting into the mid 20s on the coast and easing tonight. Tonight is the coolest night since spring: 57 in Fernandina, 53 in Yulee, 50 in Callahan and 48 in Hilliard. The rest of the week is dry and sunny in the low to mid 70s with lows in the 50s and low 60s, and the onshore wind builds again Friday into the weekend, so the rough surf and the rip risk will probably be back for Taste of Amelia on Saturday. No tropical systems in the Atlantic.

The Alachua Street townhomes come back to the Historic District Council on Thursday at 5 p.m., a month after the council sent them away for lack of architectural detail, and this time the staff report recommends conceptual approval. The plan, from architect Mark Akins of Rice Architects, puts nine attached three-story townhomes on the 0.62-acre privately owned lot at 101 Alachua St., at the corner of North Front Street across from the river, which Downtown Crab LLC bought for $2 million in 2020 and now uses as a temporary parking lot. The row would face Front Street and the river with brick-style exteriors, balconies and two-car garages reached from a driveway behind, and the Observer's Mike Lednovich reports the staff report puts the height at about 36 feet above base flood elevation, under the 45-foot maximum the CRA design guidelines allow at that location, and calls it compatible with the Standard Marine Building and the Crab Trap next door. The things the application does not say are the ones neighbors will ask about: how many cars use that lot today and whether any of the spaces are public, what the townhomes would cost, and when they would be built. Thursday's vote is conceptual only; final materials, a fire-truck turnaround, coordination with the railroad 25 feet away and a formal technical review all come after.

The county commission meets Wednesday at 9 a.m., and the item with the longest shadow is a one-page resolution: it rescinds Resolution 2026-013, the list of target industries for the county's Economic Development Grant program, and replaces it with one that removes every reference to data centers and states that they are not eligible for grant assistance "or any other County economic incentives." The staff summary puts the effect in one line, "No County funds will be available for economic development incentives to data centers." That is a different lever from the 12-month moratorium the board passed in June, which pauses applications; this one says that even when the moratorium lifts, a data center gets no county money. The same morning the board takes up a proclamation supporting the Save Our Shrimpers Act, the federal bill against subsidized imported shrimp that the House passed 391 to 18 in May, requested by John Steele of the Shrimp Festival board; a no-cost agreement with FDOT to widen and drain about 460 feet of Stratton Road where it meets State Road 200; $519,758.12 in double chip seal paving; and a drainage project update from Public Works. The American Beach item on the same agenda is below.

For years, Nassau County residents who could not afford breast cancer screening could get it free in Jacksonville through Pink Ribbon Jax and Ackerman Cancer Center; the Observer's Shari Roan reports the program now has a Fernandina Beach location, Ackerman's Amelia Island office at 1340 S. 18th St., Building A, Suite 103. The way in is Pink Ribbon Jax: you submit income and insurance information to verify eligibility, the all-volunteer nonprofit connects you to the Fernandina office to schedule, and if a screening finds something the group pays for the follow-up too, ultrasound, MRI or biopsy. You do not need to see a doctor first, but you will need a primary care provider to receive the results, and the program will help you find one. Dr. Gaelyn Scuderi, Ackerman's director of women's imaging here, said the drive downtown was "very difficult, very challenging or very costly" for many of the women who skipped it; about 10 percent of county residents live at or below the poverty line. The timing is not an accident: the county proclaimed this week Breast Cancer Awareness Week, with Wednesday as Pink Day.

Early voting for the Nov. 3 election runs Thursday, Oct. 22, through Saturday, Oct. 31, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and any registered Nassau voter can use any open early-voting site; the Supervisor of Elections has the list and live wait times at votenassaufl.gov, or by phone at 904-491-7500. On election day itself you vote only at your assigned precinct. If you want to vote by mail, state law says the request has to reach the elections office by 5 p.m. on the 12th day before the election, which is this Thursday, and the ballot has to be back by 7 p.m. on Nov. 3; every early-voting site has a secure drop box during voting hours. What is on the Nassau ballot: the Fernandina Beach mayor's race between commissioners Genece Minshew and Tim Poynter; three statewide constitutional amendments, including Amendment 3 on homestead exemptions and property tax limits, the one the county tied its library and nonprofit cuts to, plus one raising the cap on the state's reserve fund and one exempting farm equipment from local property tax; the school district's one-mill renewal; Hilliard's council seats and charter questions; and, on the island only, Group 2 of the Amelia Island Mosquito Control District.

Taste of Amelia puts twenty-some downtown kitchens on one Saturday afternoon. If a visitor could order one dish downtown before they leave, what is it and where? We would like to build the list from the people who eat here all year. Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.

Saturday's crawl checks in beside the Palace Saloon, which calls itself Florida's oldest bar. What year does it date itself from, and what did the harbor crowd call it in the port's busiest years?

Answer: 1903, in a building that dates to 1878. By the Palace's own account, Fernandina's docks were among the busiest in the South between 1880 and 1910, and of the harbor district's twenty-odd saloons only one carried the name "the Ship Captain's Bar." The 40-foot bar and the hand-carved mahogany caryatids are from that era, and the claim to be Florida's oldest continuously operating bar is the Palace's own.

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