Today may be a bit cloudy outside but this did not dampen our spirits as we were buoyed by news of the first cores back on the catwalk for a while plus the experience of eating outside on picnic tables for our first deck barbeque, marking our second weekend at sea. Everyone seemed to enjoy the novelty of sitting out in the bright sunshine and eating some rather good grilled meats and salad. Back in the lab some relatively long recovered sections revealed volcanic breccias, much to the excitement, surprise and joy of the science party. In fact as the coring continued the length of the cores just seemed to get bigger and bigger. It was a surprise to see something so volcanic and clearly erupted rather close to a volcano, while we are still hundreds of meters above the supposed top of the true igneous basement in the middle of an ocean basin. This resulted in a little tug of war between sedimentologists insistent that breccias are sediments and igneous petrologists who have had little to look at so far and who were hungry to get their teeth into something worth researching. It was good to see core on the table waiting to be sampled and described and to feel the lab come back to life again. We can only hope that the hole remains stable and that our recovery stays good as we push forward to basement.