Fort Lauderdale to Jensen Beach - Washup

Review of our Trip from Fort Lauderdale to Jensen Beach and back.

Memorial Day Weekend.

06:15 Thursday May 22nd till 15:30 Monday May 26th 2025

Quick Recap:

We sailed from our home port to Lake worth on Thursday 22nd, Motored from Lake worth to Jensen Beach on Friday 23rd. Stayed on a Mooring Friday night, Saturday and departed Sunday morning back to Lake Worth and then from Lake Worth to home port on Monday.

Sailing:

Not much :( we were able to sail for a couple of hours on the way up to lake worth. The rest of the trip was under motor. Wind was either too light or on the nose. It happens.

Sails were looking good. All the lines were good, Furler, Winches and steering all good.

Motoring:

Lot's. Engine pushed us really well, highest speed was 7.9knots. Engine temp remained steady even during the times we pushed our 3 pot Universal M25XP to WOT at 2,200 rpm ( that's as forwards as we can move the throttle.)

Navigation

I mounted the Samsung Tablet at the helm, it's big but that worked in our favor. It's running AquaMaps and we have the full subscription. It offers additional nav data and I recorded at least one of our tracks so that I can see how that works out.  

We have a Power brick on board and I had that plugged into the Tablet at the helm so there were no power issues.

Communications

VHF works great, we had several severe weather warnings pop up on #4. We used #68 for interboat chats, #16 on the Ocean and #9 on the waterways.

Food:

We ate well. We did miss the Picnic Lunch on Saturday and the Dinner on Saturday evening, so we ate all of the food we took with us. Best meal was the Shrimp Fettuccini that Peg's had prepared earlier in the week.

Drinks:

We mistakenly did not 'fill' our water tanks and quickly consumed the bottled drinking water we had onboard, wanting to preserve our tanked water for showers. Plenty of Wine, Rum and Whiskey but ending up bringing most of that home. Our Buddies Mike and Barry delivered Gatorade and Bottled water to the boat when I was poorly on Saturday, a huge help! Next time bring lots of both.

Bedding:

Two sets of bedding, just as well as we had left a hatch open on the Ocean trip from Jensen to Lake Worth and soaked the V-Berth bedding.

Towels & Linens, Clothing.

We brought plenty to last the 5 days and had some left over. My new Tilley hat was worth the money.

Toiletries & First Aid Kit & Meds

We had plenty of everything, needed nothing special. Purely due to timing, I had meds enough through Wednesday morning but would have had an issue if we added another couple of days to the trip.

Refrigeration:

Our primary Fridge Freezer worked great - except that I had turned it off when we left the boat on Wednesday afternoon - and after loading it with our food. We had to toss out some of it.

Our secondary Fridge Freezer - BougRV - worked great except that it did not like the drop in voltage when we ran the AC. I need to rewire the 12v supply to the aft cabin, it suffers a voltage drop. So bigger wiring. I'll lookup the power requirements for the Bougrv fridge and make sure there's plenty of capacity.

The new Ice Maker worked pretty good. It did not perform as well on the boat as it did in our Air Conditioned home. It does make ice quicker than our main fridge freezer, and it is easier to get Ice from it compared to having do dig down in to the main unit. It is currently installed adjacent to the BougRV portable fridge freezer, not the best location but it is secure. I should make a hold down strap for it.

Cooking:

Total Success using our portable Induction Cooktop. Did not use any propane at all over the weekend. I am going to go ahead and remove the propane cooker and supply.

Our induction kettle - cute but dangerous - The kettle is really a camping kettle, silicone, folding but not so clever when it full of hot water! After searching for a decent Induction cooktop Kettle I decided to switch to an Electric Kettle. I'll write up a review when we test it next weekend. It's 1.2kw.

Pots -n- pans - Still my favorite set of pans - Larger Skillet, Medium Skillet ( have to try using that to make Omelettes ) and a Sauce Pan. They heat up so quickly on the Induction cooktop. Seem to be pretty non-stick and stack up for storage in the oven ( Soon to be galley storage cupboard unless I go for an Air Fryer/Toaster/ Combo oven.)

I did toss out some duplicated utensils, just wasting space.

Air Conditioning:

Another success; We ran the AC for a few hours on Saturday afternoon using the Honda Generator, but if we needed it at any time, we ran the AC on the Batteries. The lowest we took our 300AH LiFePo4 batteries was to 49%  And we have two more 100Ah batteries to wire into the system.

Mooring system.

I used our Anchor Snubber for the mooring line at Jensen Beach. over kill. In Lake worth, the mooring pennants are really beefy and barely fit over our cleats.  I'll make a couple of mooring loops that do fit.

Fuel:

Our tank was 7/8 full ( 20 gallons ) at the dock. We carried an additional 10 Gallons on deck. Added 4 Gallons on Saturday night, arrived at the dock with over 3/8 ( 9 gallons ) left.

• Thursday  - 4 hours
• Friday - 8 hours
• Saturday - 0 hours
• Sunday -7.5 hours
• Monday - 8 hours

Total 18 gallons / 27.5 hours = ~ 0.7gph  

I did fill the Honda Generator, about 1 gallon Gasoline. Didn't use it all.

What to do before the next trip:

• Complete the upgrade of the LiFePo4 additional batteries
• Get the Mercury Outboard fixed.
• New Bridge list ( laminated list blew overboard )
• Install new Cabin fixed ports ( badly crazed )
• New Kettle
• New Mooring loops
• New Towel holders on inside Head Door
• Hold down straps for the dinghy
• Hold down strap for the Ice Maker
• Curtains for the 6 opening ports ( 4 main cabin, 2 V-berth ) They need to allow for the port to open. ( Decided we'll go for the Clozure blinds for the opening ports. )
• 
  

Things we would do differently

Reduce the Schedule! If the club has another destination cruise ( I hope they do! ) then we'll leave at least a couple of days before and plan to stay out longer. 

If we're on the ICW, then we'll only use the Bob423 tracks during the risky parts of the trip. The stress of trying to stay within such a skinny line ruins the trip.

Ok, let the work continue.

See you on the water.