Hey All,
I just wanted to leave everyone with a quick recap of what has happened over the past few days:
Our team of pilots and technicians from RU and TWR have been working hard analyzing the steering data from Challenger trying to get her to fly better. Last week, she started spinning occasionally on her dives and so we have been working to try and diagnose the problem and apply a fix.
We have also officially decided that we will recover in St Helena. With Challenger just 480 km from the northern shore, Tina Chip and Dave have continued contact with the travel agencies that are familiar with the island. Through here we have been able to confirm that we are able to get to the island by flying into Cape Town South Africa and taking a 5 day ride abord the RMS St Helena. Today we also received confirmation that we will be able to get a new set of lithium batteries shipped to where we will need them in order to re launch Challenger after the recovery operation. Chip was even able to secure us a ~40 ft sailboat as long as we are able to get to the island before the end of August.
To the north, Silbo continues to drift, now just 900 km from French Guiana as our friends up at TWR continue to try and find a way to rescue our brave little droid. Sunday the 23 marks the 2 year anniversary since Silbo was deployed up in Iceland at the beginning of his journey.
Force Wind Sea & Honor