Through the week, Challenger continued to persue the waypoint to the north east. Looking at Copernicus forecast, we hoped we could snake 29 up and around the cold eddy to our east and start making progress back towards Cape Town.
On Tuesday after seeing RTOFS/HYCOM we’re performing the best capturing an eddy to the immediate west that matched the curvature of the gliders reported currents, the way point was moved way out to the north east in order to avoid being dragged west as we reached the northern edge of the eddy.
We also commanded 29 to start diving deeper by 50m (to 550m). The glider is now seeing over 20% biological growth which has affected our steering and slowed down the glider. In order to combat the growth and to try and dive below the currents that are proving to be too variable for the models to accurately portray them, we are going to start diving 50m deeper at a time in order to acclimate the pump to diving past 500m again.
Finally as the week wraps up, Challenger was able to break away from the eddy that was threatening to drag her further west, and began making progress east in the absence of strong current. Hopefully this will last as Challenger makes her way towards Cape Town.
Force Wind Sea & Honor