Day 5- extended push and reline

The winds have died down and the Tickle, the local name for the body of water between Bell Island and Portugal Cove, was flat as glass. We had received the kermantle on Thursday evening and had planned on relining the main line with it. Two teams had 1000ft spools set to go.

Again, the volunteers were great. Gear was taken down into the mine and divers were ably assisted into the water. More video and pictures were planned for, as well as a big push to the west of the main line. We were successful in both efforts. The main line was relined and straightened to the pump room. The west team ran their line out into a dead end. The video team ended up with twenty five minutes of usable video, as the system had a pretty visible mud line from the floor to halfway up the passages.

We have been getting three hours of in water time on the RB's and 90 minutes on OC. With the number of divers and support staff, we have been getting further into our schedule than we thought we would get by this time. We were excited by the deep push setup today with the gold line getting down to 43 meters. This is past the 58 passage on the mine map, quite a way in as the slope starts to settle out.

It has been truly amazing to hear the excited stories from each diver. Despite the constant presence of the local media and documentary team, we have been open in sharing all aspects of the dive, successes, failures, equipment issues (two lights so far, both repaired). The amount of artifacts we have been finding has been exciting, as you are constantly on the look around the next passage to see what is held there. Short rail tracks, rail ties, wagon wheels, spikes, shovels, metal bars, canvas tool bags, support poles... all exciting to us. To think that the miners were making these passages all by hand, Wow. Some of the main rooms have exceeded my previously held ideas, as they exceed 100ft by 100ft in size. Too bad the visibility is so poor as it would be great to see from one side to the other.

We have constantly commented on the amount of support poles we have found on the floor, and the amount of breakdown we are finding. Needless to say, we have been looking overhead a lot during our dives. We did have one pole fall already during a dive, the divers had used it as a tie off, but it turns out the pole was not as firmly positioned floor to ceiling as it appeared, and after they had swum away, began to topple.