Hey All!
So just about a week ago, Challenger crossed the EEZ of the British Overseas Territory of St Helena
St Helena is a volcanic island along our path that is a territory maintained by the UK. It stretches just 10 miles across and out of its population of roughly 4,000 people, we have been able to find a man willing to help us out!
In the northwest sector of the island, along the shores of the cities of Jamestown and Ruperts, there looks like there is significant boat activity. One of these boats will be setting sail within the next month equipped with means of communication back to the COOL room where we will provide shore support as our volunteers sail out to Challenger inspect her and scrape off the suspected biological growth we suspect has been causing our technical issues.
Over the past few weeks, Dave has been hard at work with Scott adjusting the gains and settings on our flight parameters, tweaking and adjusting ever so slightly until they were able to trim our heading error down to a fraction of what it was. However, due to what ever has grabbed hold of the glider we are no longer able to use the currents calculated by the glider for navigation. As it turns out, the algorithm that is used to create these vectors is meant for use on a clean glider and does not account for drag. So, as barnacles grow and create drag, the algorithm can mistake this as a head current.
With the latest numbers, Challenger has been flying between 10 and 11 km/day. Being just 250 km from the western shores, that leaves us just 25 days from the island.
Although we are almost there, there is an obstacle in the way; one last seamount. Just 35 km to the south west, we are trying for some evasive maneuvers by moving the way point a bit to the east to allow us to fly to the south of the sea mount.
Looking forward, based of the latest calculations, Challenger has roughly 150 days of battery left based off a energy usage of 2.5 Ah/day which was what we maintained before and after the siesta back in May. If after the cleaning, we are able to maintain 20 km/day Challenger will be able to make easy work (relatively) of the transit from St Helena to Ascension Island. There we can easily get a technician and fresh batteries out to prepare the glider for the next voyage.
To the North, Silbo has been doing a fascinating job as a drifter following the North Atlantic Gyre.
He has been drifting over 25 km a day over the past month and heading right for the Caribbean. Now just ~80 km from the EEZ of Barbados and ~450 km from the eastern shore, Silbo seems dead set on hitting his finish line and taking a break even without the ability to control his movements.
The forecast even seems to be in our favor as tomorrow the surface currents seem to shift from North/NorthEast to more North West, further towards the Caribbean. In the coming weeks a recovery mission may need to be planned as Silbo moves further towards shore.
Force Wind Sea & Honor