Guys, as many of you know there are functional issues with our array of nearby buoys. The 44066/Texas Tower 4 went adrift early in the year; 44025 off Islip stopped working a couple of weeks ago, and 44017 off Montauk has no wind gauge.

According to the ops center at the National Data Buoy Center as of last week, their intention is to do a full service and replacement sweep of all these buoys within the next 4-10 weeks.
They figure it is more cost effective to use a CG cutter since it will require a major crane to do the lift and drop.One cutter has to be free and needs to allocate a week to accomplish this.

Earlier I was told that the 44066 was to be in the water by this time but now the schedule has been modified due to funding and remnants of Deepwater activities. Unfortunately this is the time for the weather to begin to change for the worse so we shall see if this takes place. Fingers crossed.

Worst case we will recommend a separate service from our nearby port to fix the 44017.

If you want to see what the 44066 deployment looked like goto Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzGIrrRGxzY

This initiative for the buoy placement following the loss of the Hotel buoy was accomplished by the cooperation among fishers, NWS,
NOAA, NDBC and in particular MARACOOS.