Christmas came and went. We decided to give the drillers a little break and shut down operations for 24 hours so they could go to Bethlehem. We hope that it boosted their morale as they were feeling a little worn out and disappointed at loosing the bottom hole assembly again. We are now in hole F. The plan is to drill down to 45 m below the lake floor to get past the problematic unstable zone in the 30's. They will try to extract core using the Extended Nose tool until the container is released from customs. There were some problems with retrieving the non-coring tool during one of the runs yesterday, but the patience and expertise of the drillers paid off and they pulled it up. Bad weather kept the night shift out on the platform again today. Hopefully, they slept well during the day and are ready to get back to work. We just sent out a boat to exchange the science crew.