Outages continue at both DR buoys

[The following is a back-dated share of an email update I sent out on January 4th, 2016, relating to outages observed at both of the newly-deployed Dominican buoys.]

I thought I should sent a followup, because both Dominican buoys are offline now.

The Catuan Wreck (Boca Chica) buoy went offline at UTC 1030 on December 30th, about five and a half days ago.  In addition to the 30-hour power outage (Dec 27th - 28th) I was describing below, there was one 3-hour power loss the day before (Dec 26th) that I had not noticed.  These two outages were followed by a 5-hour outage the following day (Dec 29th) and then the current multi-day outage which began Dec 30th.

Curiously, all four CWDR1 power outages began at the same time of day, within about 20 minutes of one another, UTC 1020 - 1050 (or Dominican time 6:20am - 6:50am).  I'm wondering if maybe this is the earliest time that sun strikes the solar panels strongly enough to generate some current, and it's knocking out the solar regulator?  But that is unfounded speculation at this point.

The Puerto Plata (PPDR1) buoy went offline on December 30th at UTC1900.  I have not yet examined that buoy's data records in detail.

Note that while I can confirm (by the missing record numbers) that the CWDR1 buoy really was powerless, repeatedly, since deployment, I am not yet certain whether the PPDR1 buoy is suffering power outages as well.  Until/unless I regain contact even briefly with PPDR1 I can't know from record-numbering gaps whether that buoy has power-systems problems or merely communications problems.

Mike J+

Deployment

The Puerto Plata CREWS buoy was deployed on December 11, 2015. Its coordinates are said to be:

19° 50.007' N
70° 43.868' W

(posted by Mike Jankulak)

Welcome to the Maintenance Log for the PPDR1 CREWS station!

As of February 12, 2015, this station's deployment is underway, and it is expected to become operational within a few days.  It is an anchored buoy located near the city of Puerto Plata on the north coast of the Dominican Republic.  It was purchased by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC or 5Cs).  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Coral Health and Monitoring Program (CHAMP) provides data management support for this station, and operates out of the NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML).

We are informally referring to the buoy as PPDR1 (Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic the 1st) although the National Weather Service in the US will also be giving it an all-numeric buoy designation.

The new buoy's approximate coordinates will be:

 N 19° 50.007'
W 70° 43.868'

This is one of two CREWS/CCCCC buoys being deployed in the Dominican Republic; the other is called CWDR1 (Catuan Wreck) and its field log may be found here.