For those of you who have been following us for a while, crossing the 221 days at sea mile stone is a big one.

This 221 Day mark is a historic mile stone set in 2009 when the glider team took the Slocum Glider RU 27 over 7,000 km and crossed the North Atlantic from Tuckerton, NJ to Baiona, Galicia, Spain.

“In spite of neptune & poseidon, the VIG club grows.” When we first started piloting Silbo in June 2011, Antonio and I started the VIG or the Very Important Glider club that we used as a way to acknowledge the gliders we were working with as they pushed the limits of what these gliders could accomplish.  And now after 222 days at sea, we are including Challenger as well.

Since deployment, Challenger has most certainly had her work cut out for her.  Promptly after crossing the shelf break of South Africa, the compass went haywire; she encountered numerous hazardous sea mounts; the deep eastward flux that she fought from February – June; the 10 day siesta in which we had no communications with the glider as she was stuck in an infinite loop underwater; diminishing battery deadlines; and of course, Barnacles!

Moving along, yesterday I gave Challenger a new way point just a little to the north east of Ascension island to try and correct for the roughly 11˚ offset we have been flying at.

However, ahead we have what looks like one last batch of sea mounts that have the potential to be dangerous, so we may need to curve our flight path around them instead of making a b-line for the island.

As it stands now, Challenger is roughly 820 km from the shores of Ascension Island so if we were to maintain >22 km/day, we should be looking at a recovery date by the end of September.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

As our dear friend Antonio exclaimed; GOAL!!!

Over the weekend, Challenger made her way out of St Helena’s EEZ and into open, successfully ducking around the last of the unfavorable bathymetry until the rocky shores of Ascension Island!

In the surface waters over the past couple of days, we have seen the circulation of a large cold core eddy as we transect the center, resulting in the oscillation of the gliders currents from North West to West. The eddy’s signature however is only seen in the first couple hundred meters and at depth we continue to see the deep north east flux shown in the image of pinzon above.

This flux should continue to help us along on the remaining 870 km that stand between Challenger and the shores of Ascension.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Hey All

Challenger is now on the home stretch measuring in at just under 1000 km from the shores of Ascension Island!

With the way point set on the next island on our journey, Challenger is leaving behind any questionable bathymetry as she continues to fly at top speeds of 12-13 km/segment

If we are able to maintain these speeds, we could be arriving at the island as early as the end of next month.  Once there, Challenger will be recovered by a team from Rutgers, rebatteried and redeployed to continue her flight towards Brazil where we plan on making land fall near Sao Paulo.

Looking at the currents, they are still in our favor throughout the water column as we continue on to the north west.  These currents should persist in the coming weeks with just some  as we are now flying along the general flow of the South Atlantic Gyre

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Hey All,

So since Challenger’s inspection off the coast of St Helena on the 31, she has continued on her mission to Ascension, but not without first running into a few more complications.

A day after the inspection, Challenger aborted due to an issue with the digifin saying the fin was stuck hard over to one side and was unable to move it.

After some work, Dave Aragon was able to kick the fin back into operation and get her back to flying again.  However, the celebrations would not last long as the fin then managed to get stuck once again on the 4th leaving us to drift at the surface for just over a day into Tuesday as a collaborative effort between Rutgers and Teledyne Webb worked to get Challenger flying again. But after a long day of testing and analyzing data, the team was once again able to pull through and get the glider flying and on her way.

Now the currents from both the glider and ocean models are showing a strong flux to the north which can also be seen in the mere speeds we are reaching now with our new clean glider: consistently > 25 km!  Hopefully these currents will persist in the coming days as we continue to push onwards to Ascension.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Hey All

Here are a few of the pictures that were taken during the inspection / cleaning mission conducted by James and Hannah Herne aboard their ship the Carpe Diem last week on July 31.  As we can see from the pictures, Challenger was pretty heavily bio-fouled, but since James and Hannah were able to give her a good scrub, our speed has returned and she has returned to flying near 27 km / day!

Force Wind Sea & Honor!

Hey All,

It looks like everything is fine once again for Challenger now after flying at speeds of 30 km/day:

However, towards the end of the day yesterday, we did run into a small complication.  After we thought that everything was fully operational once again with Challenger, she aborted due to an error with the digifin. What triggered this abort was that the fin got stuck to one side and was unable to free itself:

After looking over the data, the glider was then sent back on a test dive which provided some positive results.  Since then Challenger has been sent on her way with a way point on Ascension Island.

The depth average current calculated by the glider are showing a flow to the North West in a favorable direction so we hope this stroke of luck will continue in our favor. Tomorrow we will update everyone on imagery from Antonio’s Cube to get an idea of what we will be seeing as we make our way through the weekend.

Force Wind Sea & Honor