HERMES Wave Droid has broken away from its anchor

HERMES Wave Droid which drifted during the storm last week is already collected in a good order. The reason for drifting 1.8 miles away from the original location is due to the very strong northern wind and waves up to 3.5 m. Thanks to the integrated GPS, the buoy was constantly transmitting data and was reached by boat.

When removing a buoy from the sea, excess drifts are reported along the Wave Droid anchor chain, as can be seen from the photos below:

During the deployment time the buoy has experienced waves exceeding 5 m, but at that time the anchor lie was clean of shells. The contribution of the overgrowth seems to be considerable mostly due to increased surface on which current is acting, increased buoyancy (the overgrowth has almost neutral buoyancy), all together cause significant increase of the dynamic force. There is remarkable overgrowth on the anchor line. That is due to the fact that last summer the sea water temperature on Bulgarian coast was extremely high (26-27C) for the whole season. At the same time, it was unusually rough summer, so waves generated quite some aeration of see water and the more oxygen helps overgrowth.

This week the WaveDroid will be back to service!