| 📅 Wednesday, October 14, 2026 Mid-Week | Fernandina Beach ☀️ 81°/70° |
Enjoy the dry stretch. It is 81 today with fog on the mainland until midmorning, and the same again tomorrow and Friday. Saturday turns: a north wind and 73 for the car show, then a rough few days at the beach.
| 📰 | What You Need to Know |
Monday's issue said the Oct. 20 city commission agenda was not yet posted, so whether Ordinance 2026-16, the replacement for the parking ordinance voters approved in August, would get its second four-vote test next Tuesday was unconfirmed. It is confirmed now, in the other direction: the agenda posted this week does not carry it. Nothing on CivicClerk explains the gap, the ordinance still takes effect Nov. 19 as drafted, and the next two regular meetings after this one fall on the first and third Tuesdays of November, the first of which is election day. What is on the agenda instead: a $450,000 Florida Inland Navigation District grant to dredge Fernandina Harbor Marina, presented by district commissioner Cathy Chapman; a proclamation making November "North Atlantic Right Whale Month," with the Amelia Island Whale Ambassadors accepting; the comptroller's September budget summary; and the annual performance reviews of the charter officers. Before all that, at 5 p.m., the commission sits as the Community Redevelopment Agency to hear Moffatt & Nichol present the two Harbor Master Plan concepts the Waterfront Advisory Board sent up unanimously on Sept. 28, plus the board's work plan from chair Jenny Schaffer. Nov. 18 is still the day the downtown meters go dark; nothing on this agenda changes that.
Read More → City Commission agenda (CivicClerk)The National Weather Service's rainfall tally for the five days through Sunday morning puts Yulee at the top of the county with 8.48 inches at one gauge and 6.67 at another, Fernandina Beach between 5.52 and 7.06 inches depending on the gauge, Wildlight at 3.08 and Hilliard at 2.06. That is the nor'easter and Isaias's outer bands, back to back. The payoff is this week: sunny and 81 to 84 on the island through Friday, 85 to 88 inland, with the only nuisance a patchy morning fog that had a special weather statement on it until 9 this morning. A cold front crosses Friday night, and Saturday is 73 everywhere with a north wind of 20 miles an hour or better on the coast. Behind it the forecasters are already flagging tidal flooding around the high tides, gusty onshore winds and an elevated rip current risk from Saturday into Tuesday, so treat this weekend's beach as something to look at. The car show on Centre Street and the Mocama concert both run Saturday regardless; bring a layer.
Read More → NWS JacksonvilleThe 18th Right Whale Festival runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7, and 10 to 3 Sunday, Nov. 8, at Main Beach Park, 32 N. Fletcher Ave., free, with live music, food trucks, art and exhibits from the research groups that track the whales. The hosts are NOAA Fisheries and the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute, which flies the aerial surveys from Georgia to North Carolina, and this year's program singles out the Amelia Island Whale Ambassadors, the volunteer group that started here and is now a nonprofit. The reason for the party is real: fewer than 380 North Atlantic right whales are known to exist, and the 2025-26 calving season off our coast produced the most calves in a single season since 2009, the fourth-highest on record, according to NOAA. Two side dates worth knowing, both from Angela Ray's column in the Observer: a $25 lecture luncheon at Story & Song at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Nov. 6, and a free Right Whale Sighting Training at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, at the Courtyard by Marriott, which teaches you how to report a whale off the beach so boats can be warned. Calving season runs mid-November to mid-April, and Main Beach is one of the places you can actually see one from the sand.
Read More → Fernandina Observer| 🌟 | Community Spotlight |
Chandler's Hope Clothes Closet is a small Nassau County nonprofit that Michele Holbrook founded and runs in honor of her son, collecting new and gently used clothing and handing it out free to anyone who needs it. This fall it needed children's sneakers and money, and Karen Bowden, who organizes a different creative fundraiser for a local charity every autumn (last year it was decorated bras for Pinky Promise), rounded up two friends and 16 local artists. The result is 18 pairs of shoes that are wearable and also art, up for bid online at chcci.betterworld.org, where you can also simply donate. You can see them in person twice: Friday, Oct. 16, 1 to 3 p.m. at Story & Song, and Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2:30 to 4 p.m. at the Plantation Artists' Guild & Gallery on the south end. The suggested admission at both is a new pair of kids' sneakers. Bid, give, or bring shoes; all three count.
Read More → Fernandina Observer| 💼 | Business Brief |
| ➤ | Sliders turns 25 under the same owner. The News-Leader reported Tuesday that George Stewart, an accountant with no restaurant experience when he saw the For Sale sign on the oceanfront grill at 1998 S. Fletcher Ave., is marking 25 years of ownership with an anniversary party this Saturday that he expects to pack the place. The article is behind the paper's paywall, so we are naming it rather than linking it. |
| ➤ | $450,000 to dredge the marina. The Florida Inland Navigation District, the state taxing district that sponsors the Intracoastal, is presenting a $450,000 grant for dredging Fernandina Harbor Marina at Tuesday's commission meeting. Dredging the basin is one of the five steps in the $12.58M rebuild, after relocating boats, taking down the former Brett's and replacing the century-old seawall. (More) |
| ➤ | The city's own bill inside the Atlantic Avenue job: $276,092. A sewer force main sits in the path of the storm drains FDOT's contractor is replacing, so the city is hiring that same contractor, MAER Construction, as a sole source to move it rather than put a second crew in the road. The money comes out of wastewater equipment accounts; the quote matched the engineer's estimate. (More) |
| ➤ | A hangar tenant over-delivered. Advanced AeroTechnologies took Hangar B at the airport in 2021 on below-market rent in exchange for funding $90,000 of improvements in five years. It spent $102,817.57, and the commission is being asked Tuesday to formally accept the work as city property. With the airport open house coming Oct. 24, it is a reminder that the field is also a landlord. (More) |
| 📌 | Briefly Noted |
- The county commission voted Monday night on the beach-lot closing hour, the first new tow rates since 2020 and the food truck rules; no outlet had reported the results by 7:30 this morning, so Friday will carry them.
- The county Planning and Zoning Board's Oct. 20 meeting is cancelled, no reason given, the second month running; the two warehouses proposed at 3070 S. Eighth St. need that board's conditional-use vote.
- The county opens its scoring of the Nassau River and St. Marys watershed master plan bids at a public evaluation meeting Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2 p.m., in the OMB conference room in Yulee.
- Bill Raser, who bought the Amelia Islander magazine in 1993 and ran it until 2002, then spent two decades on local stages (Javert in Les Misérables among them), died Sept. 25 at 89.
| 🗓️ | Quick Picks This Week |
|
THU
15
|
207 Cedar St. • 7:30 p.m. • Runs through Oct. 31, evenings at 7:30 and 2 p.m. matinees; box office (904) 261-6749, Wed-Fri 11 to 1
|
|
FRI
16
|
Baker Hall, 233 S. Third St. • 6 p.m. • Free for members, $5 otherwise, streamed; earlier that day the Step Up shoes are at Story & Song, 1 to 3
|
|
SAT
17
|
Centre Street • 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. • North wind and 73; the farmers market runs 9 to 1 on N. Seventh, and Jefferson Starship with John Waite plays Mocama's front lot at 7:30, doors 5:30, rain or shine
|
Calving season starts next month, and the festival wants people to know how to report a whale from the beach. Have you ever seen a right whale from Amelia Island? Tell us where you were standing and what month it was, and if you have never managed it, tell us where you keep looking. Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.
The outfit handing the marina $450,000 next Tuesday, the Florida Inland Navigation District, is on your property tax bill. How much does it cost you, and what does it exist to do?
Answer: 0.0270 mills in 2025, which is $2.70 a year on every $100,000 of taxable value, the smallest line on a Nassau County bill. The district was created in 1927 to buy the old canal and serve as the local sponsor of the federal Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway; it taxes the 12 east-coast counties from Nassau to Miami-Dade and gives part of the money back as waterway grants, which is how a dredging check for Fernandina Harbor Marina comes from an office in Jupiter.
Enjoying The Island Brief? Forward it to a neighbor. That's how this grows.
Share With a Friend ✈️Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe free →
The Island Brief
Your morning guide to Amelia Island & Nassau County
View in Browser · Advertise With Us
Fernandina Beach, FL 32034