Please forgive the somehow outrageous processing of this photo; it probably reflects our more colorful perception of everything since we went down to the bottom of the hole (1507.1 meters below seafloor) yesterday morning at about 9 am. Smiling faces are back in the labs; everybody is ready.

Once again, nothing would be possible out here without the experience and skills of our drillers and their teammates on the rig floor and in the derrick. Their persistent efforts over the last two weeks to clean this hole simply made our dreams come within reach. Tripping 5 km of drilling pipe up and down is not an easy game. We will soon watch the 8^th reentry on the shipboard TV screens since April 19. Respect!

We will now cement the cavities in the zone 950 meters below seafloor to protect the hole. We will then POOH again (I like this acronym; you must guess what it stands for …), and reenter with a coring bit. If everything goes fine, the first core on deck should be announced by the driller in a couple of days.