Our good friend Antonio has done it again, filling our inboxes with spectacular images crucial to the success of this mission. After doing some digging on the MarineTraffic website, Antonio was able to create a density plot of shipping traffic in the area. From this, we are able to see a relatively safe path from our latest location to the endzone. Amazingly, this almost matches up with the Endurance Line defined weeks earlier- a good sign for future glider missions.
Antonio also sent along the 4-D ocean state visualization cube Pinzon, featuring sea surface height which depicts an eddy solar system to our south along the shelf where a number of warm core eddies are circling a cold eddy.
With the recovery now slotted for the early hours of Sunday May 18, our team makes final preparations for the main event. Scott and Chip will travel down to Brazil on the 14th where they will soon meet up with Marcelo Dottori at the field station in Ubatuba. While they get themselves on their way, Challenger will be set to cross the shelf and head in towards shore. Depending on our progress, we may pick a spot to loiter to kill time, but the overarching goal is to get as far in shore as possible so there is not a whole lot of time spent on the boat. We would rather reserve that time for servicing on shore.
Until then, we will head shore ward just to the north east of our proposed Brazilian endurance line.