Hey All!
Well it’s official, Challenger has crossed into international waters!!! On the last surfacing, Challenger pushed forward to fly 450km allowing us to finally cross our boundary. Now we can focus further on setting ourselves up to jump from eddy to eddy on our way to Fortaleza Brazil without worrying about crossing another countries property
Speaking of chasing the eddies, we will continue to fly Challenger to the North West as we move into position to follow the stream of eddies that pours out of the Indian and follows the South Atlantic Gyre to the North West.
By jumping from eddy to eddy in this fashion, we should be able to work our way up towards St. Helena and Ascension Islands on our way towards Brazil.
Looking at the eddies in our vicinity, it looks like we should be having currents more to the north west, however we continue to record currents flowing nearly due south. Tomorrow I will try and create an image of the depth average currents to see if there are any subsurface currents that may be harmful to our mission.
Today we also ran a steering test, in which we adjusted the gain values to try and beter utilize the fin. The gains were also adjusted on low power mode, that way when the computer turns on after sleeping for 30 seconds, it doesn’t immediately jump unless there has been a drastic change in direction.
Silbo is continuing to feel the steady north western flux of the north eastern edge of the cold eddy. As slow as silbo has been moving due to this situation, it is looking more and more as if the large warm eddy to the south may come to the rescue. As each day passes, it seems this eddy pushes closer, resulting in the cold eddy becoming over powered. Hopefully within the next couple days, this eddy will become completely irradiated and Silbo will see currents moving to the south for the first time since the second week in October!
Force Wind Sea & Honor!