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Now just under 140km from the South African EEZ, Challenger continues to fight her way through currents pushing to the North and West to make progress towards shore.

Through the weekend the glider continued to pursue the way point set on Friday and after a few surfacings, Challenger made a steady turn to the east and has progressing in that direction since Saturday afternoon.  However, the change in currents doesn’t seem to be reflected in any of the models.

OSCAR March 14

The latest run of OSCAR says that there will soon be a current to the south, however has the current in the immediate area pointed south west while the glider is reporting currents to the North West.

Copernicus March 14

Copernicus shows a similar field ahead of us, however it has the glider already in the southward current again contradicting what the glider is reporting.

RTOFS March 14

GLOSEA March 14

HYCOM March 14

HYCOM, RTOFS and GLOSEA all are similar today in showing that there is a weak current immediately ahead of Challenger and so after looking at the 5 models we will keep the waypoint in the same spot for now and hope the eastward progress continues.

As for recovery preparations, we are continuing to work on locking down the Algoa as the recovery vessel.  The ship has room for 16 passengers and so far the Recovery Crew is as follows: Scott Glenn, Josh Kohut, Travis Miles, Chip Haldeman, Dave Aragon (RUCOOL), Rick Ludescher (RU Dean) + Andrenette & Cassidy (2 students). Lizette + Partner (film crew from RU27). Ben Allsup (TWR) Marcelo Dottori (USP), and Antonio Ramos(ULPGC)

Force Wind Sea & Honor

As we head into the weekend Challenger looks like she is encountering the cold core eddy sitting to the northwest.  Over the past three surfacings, the speed of the currents have steadily increased from 17 to 18 to 22 and rotating to the south west simulating the glider entering the south east sector of a cold core eddy.

To try and combat this westward flow, the glider was just issued a new way point to the East North-East at -33˚ S 14˚ E to pursue over the next few surfacings

Force Wind Sea & Honor

The currents reported by RU29 have rotated to northwest, but the good news is they are still relatively small at about 11 cm/sec.

RU29 is making good progress in these conditions, using her speed to push east.
If we keep this track, we enter the South African EEZ on the northern side of an Agulhas eddy lying just inside the EEZ that carries us even closer to shore.

OSCAR Forecast Mar 9

First current map is from the OSCAR product showing we are in a very low flow zone that extends to the EEZ.  As long as the flow is low, we are good with the direction error we are currently seeing in OSCAR locally.

Copernicus Forecast Mar 9

Second current map is Copernicus, the most reliable product of the entire trip.  Copernicus says we are crossing the middle of a strong jet to the Southwest. It is clearly wrong about the jet.  Currents are weak to northwest.

HYCOM Product for previous week

Third map is HYCOM, the newcomer to the mix.  It is in very good agreement with the observed currents by Challenger. HYCOM says there is a small area of slow currents on our way to South Africa, and we should stay about this latitude since if we go south, we encounter a strong current to the west.

HYCOM Forecast Mar 9

Fourth map is the HYCOM forecast, showing the jet to our south is forecast to strengthen.
It is nice to know this forecast, that if this jet is true, and if we somehow drift south,
we may encounter a current that opposes our progress.  if we do encounter this current, we would try to fly back north to get out of it and back into the calm water. But right now with the northward ocean currents, and keeping RU29 focused on east, the likelihood of us drifting south into this current is low.

Historical Vessel Traffic

Finally we have the historical vessel track data that outlines the path ships have taken over the past couple of years. The glider is currently flying through an area that is more heavily trafficked and so we will try and keep surface time to a minimum to avoid being struck by boats.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

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

To kick off the week, Challenger was given another waypoint close by to the East North-East in hopes that we can turn the glider and avoid the large eddy threatening to bring the glider way to the North.  The waypoint also aims to keep the glider in the nice pocket of low ship traffic to reduce the chance of being struck by a boat while at the surface.

The pump also continues to have some issues as the team is now tweaking pitch angle and the deadband on the pump to find the ideal setting that gets the glider flying faster while getting less oddities or errors.  To also try and reduce the stress on the pump, the dive depth was reduced again to 500m.

OSCAR March 2, 2016

By mid-week, it was time to move the way point further east to try and avoid the eddy to the north. The OSCAR model seemed to agree closest to what the glider was recording, so we moved the way point to try and steer 29 into the weaker area of the current shown above in wednesdays product.

Finally, Dave plotted 29s power consumption and compared it to the mission from Cape Town to Ascension and found that according to the curve, we may only have about 60 days of power left giving us to the end of April to get the glider out of the water.  With this new press for time, Dave and our friends down in South Africa have started searching for boats we can try and charter as recovery vessels as we now want to recover as soon as we can.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Starting off on Friday afternoon, Challenger was given a waypoint to the North East.  The glider was entering an area of weaker currents so we were trying to capitalize on that and try and make as much eastward progress as possible while we had the opportunity.

The currents remained weak but variable through Friday into Saturday, however by Saturday night, the currents rotated back to the west, once again slowing 29s progress towards South Africa and forcing the gliders path to curve back to the north as she was unable to over power the current.

Also over the weekend, we stepped the depth at which the glider dives to further down to 600m in an attempt to damper the growth of creatures on the hulls of the glider and to better fight the current.  The pump which has been problematic throughout the mission though didn’t react well to the deeper dive depth and began slipping again resulting in increased power consumption.  Because of this, the glider was commanded back to flying to 550m in hopes that the pump will return to normal behavior.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

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

On Friday, we left off with Challenger struggling to make progress across a powerful jet that continued to push westward.  However, as we made our way into the weekend, the currents slowly but surely started rotating to a more favorable direction from nearly due west to having more of a northern component.  This was very nicely shown in the copernicus forecast where challengers reported currents while entering the domain of the cold core eddy matched that of the model.

By sunday afternoon, Challenger began showing the currents rotate back west, again slowing the gliders progress and pushing her back to the west.

As we start off this next week, we will move the way point to the NE  50% north 50% east of the glider speed.  This we hope will give us the best shot of making it safely between the eddy to our east and west as seen in the RTOFS map below, so we can hopefully safely maneuver towards Cape Town.

The batteries are still holding well, giving us an estimated 100 days remaining which will hold us over until the end of May.  As of now, we have two potential recovery windows at March 29th – April 1 and April 18 – 30.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

With the start of the week, a new way point was issued at 35˚ S 11˚ E to try and maintain a 90˚ angle to the strong current that plagued Challenger through the weekend.

As the week went on, the strong currents continued to push our glider westward away from our goal of the shores of Cape Town.

Antonio reached out with maps from Copernicus showing that the western jet could be from a large cold eddy – the center eddy of the ‘solar system’ we have now snaked back towards the middle of.

According to the forecast, it looks like we will need to start making some progress if not east, to the north, otherwise there is another clock wise rotating cold core eddy that has the potential to pull us further west and away from our target.

The discussion has also opened up with our friends Seb and Fred down in South Africa as we prepare to secure a boat for 29’s recovery.  With the glider being only a 2-3 day boat ride from Cape Town, we are hoping to get a boat that will allow an overnight operation such as the RV Alpa Delphini that was used on multiple occasions.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Since Friday, Challenger has been flying with the way point set to the North East in an attempt to effectively fly across the westward jet shown by the OSCAR Product.

The current however has been pummeling the glider, and over the course of the weekend we went from seeing  the fastest speeds of the mission to the slowest.  At the Friday evening surfacing, the glider had flown 28km in 13 hrs while at this morning’s surfacing just over 4 km of progress was made.

This slow in progress is due to the rotation of the current, from nearly due north on Sunday (354˚) , to just North of West today (284˚)

The way point has now been set to 35˚S 11˚30E to try and get a better angle on the current.

GLOSEA Forecast Feb 15

RTOFS Forecast output Feb 15

OSCAR Forecast Output Feb 14

HYCOM Forecast output Feb 15

Copernicus Forecast output Feb 15

The KMZ’s for the latest model outputs can be found on the RU 29 Diagnostics Page here: http://rucool.marine.rutgers.edu/gliders/29/ under the heading “Project Links and KMZs”

Over the next few days we will continue to aggressively change the way point as we try and get Challenger out of this strong current and further North so we can make our final approach towards Cape Town

Force Wind Sea & Honor