After stocking up nicely in Gove, we were ready for the ‘Gulf Crossing’. Gove is an easy spot to leave from, for both provisioning and distance/wind angles (sometimes!) As we were almost ‘officially’ in cyclone season, we were eager to get going when the first weather window presented itself – we’d been told by a few cruisers that if the forecast wind was less than 15kn for 3 days/ish – just go! We’d had a fair bit of time to read up about the Gulf being ‘the breeding ground for cyclones’ and to watch out for the ‘knock-em-down’ storms in October (named as such for the crops they decimate in 20 mins or so…) The weather was definitely changing – moody looking skies and increasing humidity… We ended up motoring/close-hauled sailed for almost the entire 55 hour trip, only copping a nasty short sea in just over 20kn of breeze as we were around 5 hours from our landfall at Port Musgrave, QLD. It can be a bit of a hellish crossing at times due to the shallow nature of the gulf, but with a bit of luck, and some good forecasting from BOM, it was another safe passage to another state. Unfortunately, we don’t have a great camera for taking night pictures (in fact I’m not sure if this is possible when you don’t have a still surface to set a tripod on) but the phosphorescence over the 2 night sail was AMAZING!! Often when sailing at night, you can have the fortune of having moonlight which lights up the wake behind the boat. However, during this sail, it was the new moon period, yet we could have sworn the moon was full when looking at our streaming phosphorescent wake! Just have to commit that to the memory bank…