mm43
I think we are furiously agreeing that the currents in this area are highly variable, and that any backtracking calculation will inevitably carry a large amount of uncertainty. Certainly the actual observed currents bear little relationship to the low resolution charts showing a NE current. I am not surprised about the disparity here - I have repeatedly tried to make the point that these charts can't be used.
What we do have is:
a) 8 boys dropped in a box around the LKP on June 4
b) in the order of 100km drift west as soon as the buoys were dropped. At the likely speed of the current (and the tracks are not time stamped), this may represent 2 days drift to the west.
c) many of the buoys then turned north - probably around June 6.
d) a fair way north of here, we then had bodies tracking pretty much due north from June 6 to June 10.
What happened before June 4? Who knows. The NOAA charts sure as hell can't tell us.
Do you have time stamped data for these charts? Does the turn to the north (from this graph, many of the buoys did turn north after heading west) fit with the time when we know the bodies were drifting north? That would be interesting to know. If the buoys and the bodies were drifting north at the same time, then it is probable that they were drifting generally west at the same time.
Anyway, the total OBSERVED drift of the bodies was to the north and likely also to the west.
It would be fairly unlikely (although of course certainly not impossible) that the drift in the first 4 days was in an opposite direction and of sufficient magnitude to totally offset this subsequent drift. Hence it is fairly likely that the total drift (OBSERVED and NON-OBSERVED) was to the NW. And hence the impact point is somewhere to the SE. How far away is anyones guess. I can't state it any more clearly than that.