As the night comes to an end, our two long duration gliders continue to pursue their waypoints across the North Atlantic.

To the north, Silbo continues to the South West towards his way point in search of the strong southerly current shown above in the Mercator/MyOcean sea surface currents. As of tonight’s position Silbo is measuring roughly 45 km from the edge of this mystical current.  If this current holds true, this will shoot us south, being the first favorable current in quite a while.  If this occurs, we will then be well on our way towards the equator, and then… Brazil!

To the south, Challenger as well continues to pursue her waypoint: due west.  Now that we have rounded the eastern sector and curled to the north, we hope to fly west along the current created by the eddy field we are in the midst of.  After making some progress west, we hope to catch the strong North jet that is visible in the image below that goes off screen.  We will continue to keep a keen eye on Challenger’s progression through the field and keep everyone updated.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Hey all!

I just want to leave everyone with a quick update before the end of the night.  Today we continued our test of inflecting at depth to get a better handle on how much energy this will draw.  This test will continue for a while so we can get a decent average of our energy consumption

East Component for the MyOcean model

To aid in piloting, I have split the current maps from the myocean model into the east and north components.  Above in the East component map, we can see the pocket of western flowing water to the north west of our current location.  This pocket represents the northern side of the warm eddy that is providing us with the eastern flux Challenger is recording. In the image below if we look at the North component, we can see the two northern jets.  Although the one we are currently in would be great to stick with, it would carry us back across the EEZ through other countries waters.  So with some crafty piloting over the next couple days, we will aim to get into the second jet to the west so we can continue along a safe course tot he north.

North Component for the MyOcean Model

To the North Silbo is continuing on his way closing in on the initial signals of the eddy creating the southern current seen below.  After the progress made over the past day we should begin to see at least a neutral current (if not a southern flux) within the next 5 days.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

So after one month at sea, Challenger has now covered nearly 700km!  Although we have not made as much progress as we had hoped after getting tripped up with our troubles steering, we have learned a lot that will aid us as we continue along with the mission.

Looking to the myocean dataset, Challenger is now just about even with center of the warm core eddy to our west, so over the next day we will most likely move the way point south to cut to the west along the rotation of the eddy.

Through the night, Challenger will be running a new test for us, this one making her top inflections at 100m instead of 20m from the surface.  The purpose of this test is to get an accurate reading on the energy consumption of staying deep on our inflections.  Staying deep like this keeps Challenger out of the reaches of sunlight and in doing so avoiding the areas most teaming with the biology that could slow us down.

To the north, Silbo has run into his own hiccoughs…

Early this morning, Silbo reported some problems that resulted in the mission being reset and Silbo running the ‘initial’ mission.  This resulted in quite a bit of drifting back to the north as we were no longer actively fighting the currents.  But soon after our teammate Ben from TWR was able to grab control of Silbo and get him back on his way with a way point back to the south west.

Now that Silbo stable and back on his way, we turn our focus back to the massive warm eddy we are creeping up on.  Now just 48 km from the first signals of southern flux, we expect to begin feeling the effects within the week

Force Wind Sea &  Honor

As Silbo slinks forward in the slow moving waters of the western side of this cold counter clockwise rotating eddy, he inches closer to a ledge that will lead to a strong southern current as we enter the realm of the clockwise warm eddy- the first currents flowing to the south since October.

Silbo has been fighting for almost 4 months now trying to find his way across the northern flux we found in the central Atlantic, but all that work has amounted to the southern flux we hope to find on the edge of this eddy.  If the signal seen in the model is true, this eddy may be what carries us to the south and close to the equator, but more importantly Brazil!  By the end of this mission, Silbo will have blown past Ru27’s record of 220 days at sea (we are currently on day 203) and will be ready for much needed rest and tune up.  Best Wishes Silbo!

In the South, Challenger is continuing to push on to the North as we follow our way point towards the eddy to our north west:

With this way point, we hope to fly a similar path to that drawn on the figure above, snaking our way along the northern brim of the warm eddy and out to the west along the adjacent cold eddy.

The most important point of this path is that it keeps us away from the second eddy to our north.  If we were to get caught in this eddy, we would be in trouble as we would get pushed by the current across state lines into the waters of Namibia.  Luckily, Dave has confirmed that we can fly both north and west directions well so following this path should not be a problem.

Speaking of the tests Dave has run, in today’s update, he reported on a number of things including the energy consumption of diving deep.  Now this is important because we are trying our best to avoid the highly productive waters off of South Africa.  We want this because Challenger has a very long journey ahead of her and we have already run into complications as it is.  The last thing we need is to get bogged down by critters growing on her hulls and slowing her down.

By diving between 200-1000m, we would increase our energy consumption by roughly 10% while keeping ourselves in waters below 15˚C and out of solar radiation – two key factors in our biological issues.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Hey All!

So our gliders are continuing to push along their path to cross the Atlantic.

To the north, Silbo is continuing to force his way down the up escalator as he flies down the western side of the warm clockwise spinning eddy to his east.  Due to this eddy, Silbo has seen a steady flux to the North West over the past few weeks.  However, we are now just 100 km from the bottom of the eddy, where Silbo may finally see favorable currents for the first time since the inspection back in early October!!

To the south, Challenger is continuing to glide to the North as she encounters the western flux from the counter clockwise rotating warm eddy to her north west.  With the current way point, we are hoping that the location of the currents will work in our favor allowing us to turn west with the eddy (below the second eddy to the north) and crossing to the west before heading north.  This provides us with a safe route onwards north without coming close to the EEZ of Namibia.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Well it has now been 200 days since Silbo was deployed off of Gran Canaria back towards the end of July of this last year.  Since then he has flown over 3400 km along his treck traversing the Atlantic Basin moving further up the ladder of the VIG club.

As for our situation with the eddy, Silbo is continuing to see that northern flux from the cold eddy to our west, but we hope soon to begin to see a southern signature from the warm eddy to our south west.

As for Challenger to the south, she is continuing to push onwards and upwards as she flies to the northwest towards our waypoint.  She has been flying well as she keeps her speed above 10 km/segment on 3 of her last 4 surfacings.  I will update tomorrow with the updated currents and forecast.  But for now, below is an image from Chip of Challenger’s path with an overlay of the bottom temperatures seen.  From this we can see pretty clearly where we began diving down to 1000 m as the temperatures quickly turn from red/orange/yellow to deep blues.

Force Wind Sea & honor

All Quiet on the Eastern Front- relatively speaking when compared to what is happening on the western side of the Atlantic

As many of you know Winter Storm Nemo is currently pummeling the North East of the US, where some places may see up to a meter of snow!  As of right now in Towaco NJ I have about 8 inches/20 cm and there are no signs of it slowing down in the near future.

But back to the central and southern Atlantic, both gliders are continuing to push onwards.

Now that we have completed Challenger’s steering tests and fine tuning, we have found a favorable heading and are now trying to see how fast we can fly so we can judge how  far we can go in a given amount of time.  This ball park number will then be projected over our options as to how we will follow on in the planning of the rest of Challenger’s Flight.  Looking now, we can see the strong field of eddies shooting off of the cape and headed due west towards the central Atlantic while the currents are more tame to the north.

MyOcean Currents + SSH

On the other side of the equator, Silbo continues to fight with the head current.  Below I have plotted an image of the V component (north south) of the currents for Silbo’s region.  From here, we can see that we are still on the cusp of the eddy that is creating the northern flux, however Silbo is beginning to close in on that dark blue signature to the south that resembles a strong southerly flux.

Silbo NCOM V component Field Feb 8 2013

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Hey All!

So today Dave ran a few more tests with Challenger in an attempt to diagnose our compass and steering problems.  These tests included adjusting the pitch over three one yo segments to a depth of 500m. After running the tests, we sent her on her way to the north west diving with the pitch to 26˚ (the most favorable settings based off of the tests run today).

1000m Averaged Currents + Sea Surface Height

Looking to the ocean models overlayed with the depth average currents, it still shows that we should be on the southern cusp of a cold eddy which should be propelling us forward.  However, Challenger is continuing to record currents flowing to the west.  The image below from Antonio seems to more accurately depict what is going on:

we hypothesize that there may be smaller eddies along the edge of the eddy shown in the model, resulting in the weak west-southwest currents we have been feeling instead of the strong flow to the west that the model shows. Tomorrow we will continue our discussion as to where we will go from here with Challenger and her mission to cross the Atlantic.

Looking to the North, Silbo continues to make slow progress as he flies the western side of a cold eddy:

Its been a long, hard battle, but Silbo is continuing to battle his way through.  Now, nearly half way through splitting this current, Silbo still has close to a week of fighting this current until there is the potential to see a southern flow from the south eastern side of the large warm eddy.

Force Wind Sea & Honor