Andy Fisher's blog

It is great to be going to sea again, especially for just a few weeks! Expedition 327 was fantastic, but spending two months at sea was difficult. I'm glad to be back to short expeditions again, and working with the amazing crew and technical folks on the R/V Atlantis. I arrived in Astoria, OR this afternoon.

The last 24 hours was pretty frustrating, because we were trying to get 10-3/4" casing into a hole drilled into basaltic crust. We got the casing about 320 m into the hole, but could not get it in the last 16 m to land it and latch it in. After trying to get the casing in for about 12 hours, we pulled it back out, shortened it, and now we are going back in to the hole.

Here is a quick photo of the underreamer being tested, below the rig floor, before it is deployed. You can see the arms of the underreamer partly extended with the spray of the water. There is a tri-cone drill bit positioned 6.5 m beyond the end of the underreamer, to drill into basement ahead of the arms (which we will use just for drilling sediment). Excellent!!!

Yesterday we installed a reentry cone on the seafloor (image above shows cone being assembled), with about 50 m of 20" diameter conductor casing below. This followed a jet-in test to verify how much casing we could get in by pumping, but without rotating.

Today I finished with preparation of the tracer injection system, thanks largely to the collaboration of Jim Cowen, Dustin Winslow, and Katie Inderbitzen.

Today we departed (finally!) for the start of IODP Expedition 327. The first version of the (preliminary) proposal leading to this project began was submitted in March 1998.