Mission completed: First Sailbuoy on the southern hemisphere

On March 1st University of Gothenburg’s surface glider SB Kringla was successfully retrieved to the South African icebreaker SA Agulhas II. For 78 days she has relentlessly battled the waves in the Marginal Ice Zone along the Greenwich meridian, see graph below. SB Kringla is the first Offshore Sensíng Sailbuoy to be deployed and retrieved on the southern hemisphere. She has measured ocean surface temperature and salinity, together with surface wind, temperature and pressure in the atmosphere. Data from SB Kringla as well as from diving Seagliders can be viewed at ROAM-MIZ. Do you have ideas about surface gliders or diving gliders? Contact us.

We are suspecting that SB Kringla has encountered an iceberg during the mission. It is likely this happened on February 7 when the weather station started to fail. On retrieval we could see that the sensor head of weather station was cracked and that there were substantial damage to the sail. Amazingly she had continued, with no apparent effect on sailing performance!