Saturday, February 19, 2011

A Good Week? You decide...

Monday & Tuesday of this past week we couldn't drill because we were waiting for the repair technician for the compressor. On Wednesday they finally said he would be there in the morning so Will and I loaded up and headed out to San Luis once again. The tech never showed up, but the compressor ran all day and we went through 60 feet of rock. Thursday, back to San Luis and again the compressor worked well until we hit too much clay and had to pull the stem to change bits. While pulling the stem we pulled the one at 50 feet and it wasn't connected to anything! We had been at 115' so you can do the math and figure out where the air hammer was...or at least where we thought it was.

We prayed and gave the problem some thought before attempting to fish out the hammer, a $5000 piece of equipment. We decided to buy 1/2" alum. tubing and connect them while feeding them down hole hoping to strike the other stem and then fall inside the stem. If we could do that then we could slip the drill stem over the 1/2 tubing and possibly re-thread them and salvage the hammer and the 13 drill stems down the hole. Again, we prayed fervently before starting and to our surprise we hit something that sounded like metal at 13' ...it should've been down 50'! Sure enough it was the wayward stem and we were able to get the tubing inside it and then feed the drill stem down to re-thread. Almost too easily we salvaged everything...it was almost 600lbs suspended in the middle of the hole with 65' of clear hole below it. If you had ever done any drilling you would know this was a miracle just short of Lazarus walking out of the tomb! Why was it waiting at only 13' for us? You can choose your own answers.

We had to head home quickly because this was Joyce's 70th birthday and the kids had a party planned for her and were waiting for Will and I. We made it home in time and had a great party for our ánchor' !

The next day it was off to San Luis again (2-1/2 hours each way) and again we would have to leave early because two couples from our church were taking Joyce and I out for her birthday celebration. We tried reaming the hole, but couldn't get past the rock; so we used a smaller rock bit and drilled to 135' before everything fell apart. The hydraulic piston on the drill mast blew out 4 bolts and became unfastened from the mast, the newly packed swivel wouldn't stop leaking, and the engine wasn't able to maintain rpms. Because we had a dinner date we loaded up everything and headed back to town pulling the rig with us to a machine shop we know in San Pedro. We made it just before they closed and they agreed to work on the problems over the weekend.

So, the week was filled with tons of trouble, setback after setback, frustration upon frustration, fatigue, lots of diesel fuel used going back and forth, four (4) flat tires, and still no water. BUT at the end of the day our King is still on the throne and the sun will be up in the morning. We have survived to fight another day and we will...it is very aggravating, but we believe God has a purpose we can't yet see and we will do all we can to complete what we fill He's called us to. Thank you for your continued prayers and support.

"Daniel jumped into the frame to have some fun"


Above is a video we took when we had to blow the water out of the hole at the end of the day.

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