We are still having trouble sending photos over our very slow satellite phone connection. We will upload some photos when we find a good connection.

It has been almost two months since we left Australia, crossed the Coral Sea, and entered Papua New Guinea. In that time we have been to 22 islands, crossed the Coral, Solomon, and Bismark Seas, and sailed about 1,600 miles. We have not seen any other cruising boat in the entire time except our buddy boats Sea Level, and Elena. We have often been the only boat the islanders have seen this year, and at our last two islands, we were the only boat that has ever stopped there!

Here is our entry from our passage out of Australia and into the Coral Sea. Enjoy.

It's Midnight here in the middle of the Coral Sea. Manjula is sleeping and it's my turn to be on watch. Sea Level, our buddy boat, just slipped out of view over the horizon. They are flying a spinnaker tonight and have been steadily pulling ahead of us for the last 7 or 8 hours. The last thing we saw of them was their navigation light on top of their mast. Now we are alone about 300 miles off the coast of Australia with about 300 miles to go to New Guinea. I can't think of too many better places to be.

Manjula and I had the good fortune to have great weather for our crossing of the Coral Sea so far. That means that it has been calm enough for us to stop and explore some of the remote reefs and islands that lie off the Australian coast. We cleared out of Australia in Bowen and headed 40 miles out to the Great Barrier Reef where we found a place suitable to anchor amidst the coral. We were careful to drop our anchor in a sandy patch so that we wouldn't damage any of the living reef. The next morning we took our dinghy around a couple of different spots and snorkeled the reef.

The color, beauty, and variety of life on the reef are staggering. Floating over the reef it is difficult to understand how there can be so many different beautiful shapes and styles of living creature. The longer you look the more life that comes into focus. There are animals that look like cauliflower, mushrooms, and outer space monsters; fish of so many styles, color combinations, and shapes that I spit out my snorkel laughing. Big ones, small ones, short ones, fat ones�^round ones, skinny ones, blue ones, orange ones. God clearly feels no need for his creatures to wear matching socks. Day glow and neon appear to be particularly in style this year, but also muted pastels, and rich earth tones. Diving down through the clear water the light streams through the caves and crannies, giving the impression of a jungle canopy. Overhanging coral petals, starfish, giant clams with 1960s tie dye patterns bursting out of their ancient shells...there aren't enough letters in the alphabe t to really share the experience.

We climbed back aboard Endless Summer, and after eating a simple lunch, we headed out of our little coral garden and motored carefully about 5 miles north looking for a place to pass through the reef and out to the open sea.

Navigating in coral is mostly about using your eyes. The charts are good for getting to the area and showing you where the shallow water starts, but once you are in the reefs, the charts are useless. Fortunately when the sun is high in the sky, the clear water allows you to see the reef very clearly. The different colors of blue, green, white, brown, and charcoal indicate the type of bottom and how deep it is. Sometimes one of us will stand on the front deck or the cabin top to get a better view and direct the driver. This time it was Manjula on the cabin top as we wove our way around the shallow areas. As we approached the gap in the reef that our chart had indicated, we saw clear signs of current on the surface of the water. As we entered the full stream, small waves broke around us. We switched to two motors as we usually only run with one to conserve fuel, but as we pushed through the quarter mile gap in the reef, the current reached 3.5 knots. We broke out of the current as our depth gauge showed the bottom drop from 35 feet to 200. We hoisted our sails and continued moving out through the reef with a little more wiggle room. The reef clusters were further apart now, giving us room to sail between them with a mile or more clearance. By night fall we were sailing over the edge of the continental shelf. More reefs and shallows lay in our path, but they were isolated reefs tens of miles apart and would be easy to avoid.

Our destination lay about 90 miles offshore. We had arranged to meet up with our friends Jim and Kent aboard Sea Level at Horseshoe Reef. We planned to sail through the night and arrive late enough in the morning to enter the reef in good light.