Hey All,
So Challenger has been closing in on Sao Miguel over the past couple of days as we get ready to recover..
As of this afternoon Challenger is about 80 km from port, or about a 4 hr boat ride (granted the ship is going 10 nautical mph). However the closer we get, the risk of having an unfriendly encounter with boat traffic increases. Because of this, we have moved the way point due west of Challenger’s location and added a way point back to the east that way Challenger will spend some time going between the way points to buy our scientists some time.
We hope that by Wednesday, Challenger will be on his way back towards the way point to the east so that the boat and take a short trip around the western side of Sao Miguel and pick the glider up and back back to shore as soon as we can. Weather wise it still looks as if Wednesday will be prime recovery window to be followed up by a further inspection of the glider and hopefully a redeployment on Friday with our next window of opportunity. But for now we wait as the team makes their final preparations to get out to the island and put this rescue mission into action.
Force Wind Sea & Honor
Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov