Day 95 and Honey Badger is still plugging away. Poseidon is laughing at us. The bloom fizzled out and disappeared the day before we got there. There are some remants of it around, but as we proceed north, the water is getting lower in chl fluorescence as well as having much less frequent spiking. Satellite imagery from 8/29/15 shows the big blooms are up north, so we have been heading that way for the past few days. It was very painful slog for the first few days since we had a significant current on the bow and at one point, we were making 0.1 kts speed over ground (that's not very fast). A course change to the north along with some higher waves has our speed up to 1 kt SOG. Much better!
We will be at the next waypoint in about 48 hours, but we will probably change course before then to head towards the blooms. The currents around the mesoscale features in the area are a significant fraction of Honey Badger's speed, so we are having to carefully monitor the sea surface height and current offset in Honey Badger's path to try and determine the best route. It reminds me of my sailboat racing days off Newport as a graduate student . Pay attention to the currents or you wind up looking at everybody's transom.
Honey Badger at sea
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