Hey all,
Well Challenger 1 has really had a run for its money since deployed almost 3 weeks ago. We are now being affected by our 5th storm!
Even after being battered and bruised over the past few weeks, we are still making good progress! In the midst of the storm, the currents are for the time being moving North East as Challenger 1 cuts to the south west thus avoiding the direct head current. By doing so we have gone 9 km two surfacings ago and just over 11 on the most recent! (much better progress than we have been seeing recently)
In the above picture, we can also see the liquid meccano that our friend Antonio has been mentioning over the weeks. There are a number of eddies in our area that have caused curves to appear in the overall northern current. In the upcoming weeks we will take advantage of these as we continue our progress to the south.
I’d like to take this time to introduce our new student allies from the Canary Islands, Rubén Marrero and Juan Alberto González from La Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, who will be staying with us for the next few weeks. Rubén is specializing in electronic engineering and Juan Alberto is specializing in oceanography.
Alberto (left) & Ruben (right)
Finally, I would just like to mention another glider related mission our group is working on. Later today we will be out on the water deploying RU28 which is a shallow glider (depth range of about 30m) off of Sandy Hook and it will work its way down to Cape May NJ after a 3 week cruise.
Nilsen & Oliver