Hey All!
So Challenger 1 is continuing on his way towards Terciera making great progress as the past three surfacings have each carried us over 10km. This is due to the presence of currents finally moving to the south and aiding us instead of causing resistance. In order to try and take the most advantage of these currents while they are helping us, we moved the way point further to the west to try and decrease the angle we were flying relative to currents to a minimum.
Sea Surface Height and Surface Currents from ULPGC
Looking at the data from University of Las Palmas Gran Canaria, at the surface the currents are moving to the North as we are on the western side of a cold eddy. However, looking at the water’s velocity at depth, we are finding much more favorable currents.
Currents at 300m depth
By abiding by our new protocol of flying 25m-1000m instead of (0-1000m), we are not only avoiding potentially being struck by a boat, but also the upper 25m of those Northern Currents.
Unfortunately, it looks like we may not have these currents for much longer.
Since October 8th, it seems the currents have been following a large inertial oscillation where they have gone in a counter clock wise rotation from north 180˙ to the south where we were this morning, and now showing evidence that it is moving westward and potentially back to the north by Friday. If this happens, we may run into yet another wall of currents.
This posses a problem energy wise, as our batteries continue to get drained at the same rate (or even greater) as when we cover a lot of ground. After a little discussion of this, Lauren Cooney presented us with a plot showing that when we are flying into a head current (similar situation to what we saw last week) the estimated distance we have enough power to cover is cut down to about 2500km. However looking at today with the currents behind us, our potential remaining distance is up to about 4000km. So distance wise, it really comes down to how forgiving the currents will be to us.
Finally just checking out the energy plot made by our friend from PLOCAN, Ruben Marerro Gomez it is looking like we should have enough energy to sustain us through the beginning of February.
Now making an estimate of our path from our current location to just north of Terciera and over to the Canaries it looks like we should have enough energy to make it. We are just about 1600km from our final destination and have used about 343 of our estimated 700 Amp-hr.
Check back for another update soon!
Nilsen Strandskov, Antonio Ramos, and Lauren Cooney