40 days offshore, carrying Sofar Ocean metocean sensors
The challenge
The brief was simple to state and hard to meet conventionally: continuous wave, wind and sea-state data offshore, without keeping a vessel on site. The usual options both have problems. A moored buoy means permits, an installation vessel, anchor maintenance and a position that cannot change once it is set. Repeated survey vessel visits mean day rates, weather windows and a data record full of gaps, because the ship only measures while it is there.
The solution
We fitted a Scout with metocean sensors from Sofar Ocean and sent it to hold station offshore. Scout's virtual anchor keeps it on position for months with minimal energy use: it drifts with the current to conserve power, then motors back to the centre point when it reaches the boundary. Running on solar power with no crew, it streamed wave, wind and sea-state data back by satellite the whole time, monitored from shore through Tether, our command and control platform.
Delivered
Scout stayed on station for 40 days, delivering six weeks of unbroken metocean data through changing weather, at a fraction of the cost of chartering a survey vessel for the same coverage. No mooring permits, no anchor maintenance, no crew at sea.
Why it matters
For anyone who needs a metocean record, the difference is not just cost. It is the shape of the data: a continuous, gap-free time series rather than snapshots taken when a vessel happened to be on site.
- Unbroken records, because the platform never goes home when the weather turns
- Relocatable coverage: deploy once, then reposition as requirements change, with no mooring to recover
- A fraction of the cost of vessel charter or buoy installation for the same record
- Scales sideways: cover multiple sites by adding units or relocating the platform
Bring us your site
The same approach works for resource assessment, operational forecasting and construction planning. Learn more about metocean monitoring with Scout, or see how it compares as a moored buoy alternative.