Hey All,

So just a quick recap of the past week: Silbo has flying pretty well averaging just around 7.5 km per 7 hr stint as he made his way through the currents created by the eddy solar system.  However, over the past day and a half, there has been a significant change in scenery… The massive cold core sun has collapsed into a couple much smaller counter clockwise spinning eddies.  With this collapse, there have been a number of other changes in the regions ahead that will make the piloting a little more tricky as we try and maintain the plan we had previously of getting to Madeira.  Our main obstacle is the strong north current that is on the other side of the remnants of the sun we are working our way around.

Although we know there chances of this path staying put are pretty slim, we still hope this general flow will hold over the next month as we fly our way east towards Madeira.  Giving us a slight glimpse of optimism is that our HYCOM and MYOCEAN models are complimenting each other quite nicely: all showing that both surface and sub surface conditions are for the moment in our favor.

HYCOM Density & Currents Map

HYCOM Salinity & Currents Map

HYCOM Sea Surface Height & Currents Map

HYCOM Temperature & Currents Map

MYOCEAN Sea Surface Height Map

MYOCEAN Surface Conditions (Currents, East Component of Currents, Temperature, Salinity)

We can see in the deeper layers of the MYOCEAN data (> 600 m) the salted water tongue coming from the Mediterranean as it becomes stronger at depth. Silbo  actually encountered one of the jet/finger/filament some days ago as we can see in the currents, salinity and temperature fields at 600 800 & 1000 m.

MYOCEAN Current Fields

MYOCEAN Eastward Component of Currents

MYOCEAN Temperature

MYOCEAN Salinity

Looking ahead, the currents are turning and soon we should find a river flowing south (SE) which is shown by all the images above, so lets cross our fingers and see what happens!

Finally, I would just like to acknowledge Silbo’s most recent accomplishment of entering the VIIIIG club as he has officially flown 4,000+ km while taking on the first leg of the challenger mission.

Nilsen Strandskov, Antonio Ramos, & Oliver Ho