“..You have grown up, Median….” Saruman in “the lord of the rings”
Hey guys,
Nilsen and Antonio speaking.. Definitely, Silbo has grown up. He flew 1048 km in 42 days (25 km/day) at 1,05 km/h (0.29 m/s). Now it is official: Challenger has joined the VIG (Very Important Gliders) Club !
A feet (> 1000 km run) that has only been accomplished by a handful of gliders before now, including Rutgers Electric Gliders RU 15 (first long distance, international flight from NJ to Halifax, Nova Scotia) RU 17 (first attempt at crossing the Atlantic), RU 26 (1000m+ runs off of St Thomas and in the Ross Sea in Antarctica), RU 27 (The first Atlantic Crossing) and Thermal Gliders Cook & Drake (attempts at crossing the Atlantic at the 26.5° latitude).
Fig 1. Very Importan Glider (>1000 km) club.
But now lets zoom back in to the Northern Atlantic where Challenger 1 is continuing to make his way south. We have suffered 15 storms since the beginning. One each 3 days. However, today it looks sunny in the North Atlantic.
Fig 2. Weather conditions 5 aug 11.
Definitely we are leaving the convection belt area of the North Atlantic determined by a high salinity and W NW flow of the currents over the silbo geographic domain.
Fig 3.- Thermohaline belt in the NE Atlantic.
Fig 4.- Salinity field the NE Atlantic (5 aug 2011).
Current path becomes clearer now and submesoscale dynamic seems to determine the day by day of silbo. Thus, over the past couple of days, we have been discussing a possible change of way point as we have come across another solar system of warm and cold eddies.
Fig 5.- Solar system: A anticlockwise sun (cold eddy) and
clockwise planets (warm eddies)
One possible path to take would be to weave our way south by catching the west side of the cold core eddy to our south (which rotates in a counter clock wise manner) which hopefully will drag us south and to the east where we will then catch the strong southerly currents of the large warm core eddy further to our south. The warm core eddy, which rotates clock wise, will hopefully then pull us further to the south and beyond.
Fig 6.- Path planning to cross this marine solar system.
Finally we would like to congrat to all of you (RUcool, TDW, ULPGC, PLOCAN), great team, for your great job and for this new great success.
Today we wish you all
force, wind, sea and honor
Nislen STRANDSKOV and Antonio RAMOS