This was a part of our journey which we were both looking forward to and NOT looking forward to. We had been listening to other boats making the crossing earlier and they had not been having a nice time out there. High seas and strong winds had made their journey's hard, especially after having it fairly easy up until this point. But the Gulf was the only major obstacle in our way before we reached our ultimate destination, Darwin.

We moved from Seisia to the Jackson River to get a better angle for our crossing and to get a good nights sleep, the following is my Diary account of the crossing of 321.8 nautical miles which took us 39 hours in total.

DAY 1

Last night as I lay on top of the covers of my bed with the wind whispering through the window slowly lulling me towards the land of nod, a big black grasshopper flew through the window and landed on my bare bum scaring me half to death. Today we embarked on our trip across the Gulf with only the dolphins and flying fish for company and as I watch the sunset and wait for the 'green flash' I've been told occurs when the sun hits the water, I can't help but think isn't life great?

Well, there was no flash but it was a nice sunset just the same. Jay and I have just started our shift 6pm to midnight, Loz is safely tucked under the doona inside while Jason relaxes with a book. We had a good start to the day doing 8 - 10 knots under Spinnaker and Mainsail unfortunately the winds eased as the day progressed and we dropped back to 4 1/2 - 5 knots under Headsail and Mainsail. Looking at our plotter currently we are doing 6 knots and have 240 nautical miles to go, which roughly equates to around 37 hours until we reach Gove and can put the anchor down if we maintain our current speed. Bring on the wind I say!

The customs plane has flown over us a couple of times now, we haven't heard from them all the way up the coast and now we have been called a couple of times. It's getting late and they have been flying around all day. I've heard them say how busy they've been with all the boats from the rally making the trek across the Gulf, I bet they're tired. We can hear the other boats on the radio but we can't see them. We are in the middle of two lots who are in a convoy going across. It's nice to hear the voices though and know that we are not alone. We have had kamikaze flying fish hitting our boat all night, the smell of them around the bedroom hatches have woken Jason up and I can see him with a torch throwing them back into the water. I'm sure we'll locate more of them once it is light again. I also saw a booby bird fly into our wind generator, Jay likes to think he flew away but I saw it and I don't think it was going anywhere.

DAY 2

It's not very pleasant anymore. The wind has gotten up to 30 knots and the seas are coming from 3 different directions which makes for very uncomfortable traveling. There is water all through the cockpit and so we are constantly wet. Looking forward to getting to the other side and having a hot shower and a sleep but we still have a little way to go. Our speed is hitting up to 14 knots at times which is fast for us. It has been both exhilarating and scary...

DAY 2 ARRIVAL

We arrived at Gove at 1 o'clock this morning, we were all relieved to put the anchor down. We were just getting ready to go to bed and catch up on some valuable rest when I heard something fall on the front deck of the boat. Jason came out of the saloon to investigate as he had heard it to. I grabbed a torch and checked and we found a large bolt lying on the deck. When we looked up the boom was swinging freely, it had fallen off and was being held by the halyard which we secure to it as a safety precaution. We all looked at each other, amazed that it had chosen this particular time to happen and not when we were halfway across the Gulf which could have been a major incident.

Suffice to say I have informed Jay that I will not cross the Gulf again and we will be coming back into Australia through PNG and the Louisiades to the Queensland side of Australia. There are no photos of this part of the trip we were too busy trying to get to the other side as quickly as possible.