Picture #007 in A Day in the Life of a Tomography Mooring

007 Once the buoy is released, it drifts behind the ship. The ship steams at a steady 1-1.5 kts upwind to keep tension on the wire. Since the mooring takes 12 hrs to deploy, the deployment starts 12 nm away from the intended anchor site. Hopefully, the wind direction does not change during the deployment...
The anchor seen in the foreground will be needed about 12 hours later.