Last week, five Polar Gliders group members were involved in a 3-day Sailbuoy training course held at the Voice of the Ocean and SCOOT space in Nya Varvet, Göteborg. VOTO has recently acquired two of these nifty, robust platforms to obtain measurements of ocean currents, surface hydrography and meteorology and fish abundance.

Sailbuoy is a small (1.5 m) autonomous sailboat, powered by solar panels and piloted from shore. They use wind energy to tack with the wind, giving it forward movement, getting surface ocean measurements along the way. Developed by Norwegian company Offshore Sensing, these platforms have already shown their worth after travelling from the Antarctic Polar waters to the South African west coast, a journey of over 3000 km! This particular mission was a part of the Polar Gliders ROAM-MIZ project, where the first publication using its data was published by Sebastiaan Swart this year.