Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Big eddy on the horizon... Maybe!

You may well have detected that we are struggling to try to understand and be able to predict on some level the ocean currents the boat must navigate.  We have mixed success. We did see a big eddy some days ago and there was definite evidence they felt some of it, but details of the prediction did not seem to pan out.

Now we approach another monster eddy at about 18N, 40W and will have another chance.  To see this one, first go to their latest position plot, that shows where they are relative to a zoomed in view, then go to 6-day forecasts and scroll the pics.

This eddy has been there for many weeks now according to RTOFS.  We have yet to get confirmation of it from other ocean models.

Note that at the time of writing here (19z on Feb 19) the boat is moving at 4.3 kts to the west.  If this is real data then they must be in a strong (>2 kts) current now. They cannot row that fast.

You can check latest position and progress at JHR position update.

We shall see...


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