Hey All!
Just last night, 29 leapt over another hurtle crossing the EEZ into International Waters and leaving Ascension behind.
Looking onwards to the journey ahead, for roughly another 10 days (~300km) we will continue to do our best to fly to the west. Then we will turn our nose to the south and make the long journey down towards Sao Paulo.
The reason for the delay in when we switch from making western progress to heading south west, is the string of sea mounts that line up to the south west of 29’s current position. This line of volcanic mountains includes Ascension Island and the Steward Sea Mount that we just flew past.
Now although the remaining sea mounts do not appear to reach up high enough in the water column to pose a problem, these sea mounts potentially could cause a disturbance in the magnetic field that could pose a problem to the glider.
Looking to the ocean models, although the RTOFS and Myocean do not quite match up, they both agree in a sense that in the upper regions of the water column there are favorable components for the direction we are hoping to fly (RTOFS @ 300m due west; Myocean @ 318m due south.)
RTOFS Temperature and Currents at 300m
Comparison of Currents: Black Vectors are RTOFS at 300m and White are Myocean at 318m
However if we peel back the layers of the ocean and analyze it at depth, the deep flux continues to be weak to the North East.
PINZON 4D Visualization of Myocean currents
As we continue to make progress to the west the currents at depth should begin to swing in our favor and help us along our way as 29 flies towards Brazil.
Force Wind Sea & Honor