Hey All!
Well it is official: Silbo is back in the water and on his way to the Canaries! Ben and Chris departed from Ponta Delgada last night and spent roughly 26 hours on the boat sailing out to the deployment location where they put Silbo and a buoy into the water
Now we will resume our posts guiding this glider to its home in the Canaries over the next few months. There is about 1400 km between Silbo and our target which we estimate will take us until about mid may as our projected recovery date.
Looking at the bathymetry, it seems like we are in the clear. From our current location on there doesn’t appear to be any dangerous land scape. This means we should have no problem with running aground or wasting battery by running the altimeter.
It also looks like Silbo has his work cut out for him already. Both HYCOM and the NLOM/NCOM models are showing not the most favorable currents, and the return of the solar system eddies.
HYCOM model of Sea Surface Height and Surface Currents
NLOM model of Sea Surface Height and NCOM model of Currents
It seems Silbo is between the bottom of a warm core eddy (clockwise spin) and the top of a cold core eddy (counterclockwise spin) resulting in a strong push to the northwest. Depending on how this eddy system evolves we may need to make a decision on whether we set the way point to fight these currents or to allow ourselves to ride the eddy south and around the west side of the cold core eddy. But we will discuss this tomorrow and I will put up another update.
Tomorrow will also bring a number of pictures from the deployment by Ben and Chris.
Force Wind Sea & Honor and welcome back Silbo!
Nilsen & Antonio