31 October 2016
Solomon Sea on Passage from Ghizo to Rabaul

05 16.411 S
153 08.157 E

All is well aboard Complexity. Jim is sleeping and I am on watch. Generally he stands watch the first half of the night and I the midnight to dawn watch. The cooler weather at night is very nice. There are no stars peaking through the low clouds that have brought intermittent rain all through the night.

The winds have been
blowing 10-15 knots from the east with a short period swell of about 1.5 meters. We should arrive at the southern entrance to St Georges Channel between New Britain and New Ireland Islands early tomorrow and reach Rabaul later in the day if the winds hold and we don't encounter a foul current in the channel. No matter if it does, we are well-supplied.

A tanker bound for Seattle crossed our stern about the time I came on watch. She wasn't close enough to see in the rain. Jim had been watching her approach on AIS. It is a little strange to think she will be calling at the Port of Seattle so very much sooner than us.

We have been reading again our reference information about Papua New Guinea imagining what it will be like and planning stops. We'll have to decide where to cross the ITCZ and equator, further west in PNG as planned or to sail north to the Federated States of Micronesia from eastern PNG. I am always impressed by how quickly life's plans become history. Our time in the Solomon Islands passed much to soon.