Now within just 130km of being in range for recovery out of Cape Town, Challenger is continuing to fight her way through the dynamic eddy field around the cape.
Through the weekend, the current seemed to be dying down while still flowing northward shown in the image above of the currents reported by Challenger matching the output from OSCAR.
With the waypoint set 150km to the east, we aimed to continue our East North-East progress while approaching the cold core eddy nestled right inside South Africa’s EEZ. This eddy we hope to catch within the next few weeks to draw the glider closer to shore when we are ready to conduct recovery operations.
This morning we had a call with Seb from South Africa to try and forge a plan for recovery. From the call, we decided the best boat to aim to get was the RS Algoa (https://www.fleetmon.com/vessels/rs-algoa_7410369_2546/?language=en), which is a South African research vessel which has a zodiac, ctd and plenty of births on board to accommodate the recovery team.
The goal is to recover the week of March 28th, arriving in Cape Town on Tuesday of that week and spending roughly 2 days at sea steaming out to the glider, recovering and returning to shore.
Piloting wise, we will continue to fly 29 east towards shore with hopes of getting within South African waters with roughly a week to maneuver around as the team arrives and steams out to the recovery location.
There is also a team of South African scientists on stand by that are willing to jump out in an emergency scenario to recover the glider if anything happens before the end of the month
Force Wind Sea & Honor