09/09/09

Last night I wrote up the blog on the New World Record for along-track distance just set by The Scarlet Knight.    I get up in the morning and the next thing in my email box is this image from our friends in the Canaries. Scarlet tacked 40 kilometers onto that total today.

Currents reported by Scarlet are in excellent agreement with the geostrophic currents from the alitmeter.  We’ll move the waypoint a bit north at the next opportunity.  We want to cross the present clockwise eddy a bit north of the center, and enter the southward flowing current in a region that gives us more time to drift south as we fly across it.

Overlaying a semi-transparent SST, the agreement between the temperature and current structure from two different satellites is amazing. We’ll continue our general path to the ENE into the cooler water towards the northern edge of Spain.

Back in the tropics, Drake is in the middle of the eastward flow jet between the two counter-rotating eddies.  We’ll move the waypoint north to start flying across the jet to get to its northern side.