Another day of trying to core with severely limited equipment. Yesterday, after re-tripping the rods, the night shift reamed us back down to ca. 45 m depth, and cored their way through a thick tephra at that depth. The day shift then showed up, started trying to core with the hydraulic piston corer (HPC). We couldn't get the water pump to consistently generate enough pressure to fire the HPC. By noon the pump was down and getting rebuilt, but there aren't enough spares to do a proper rebuild. It seems as though we have had multiple major equipment failures since day 1- the main hydraulic pumps that power the entire drilling rig, AND the water pumps used in coring. We're dead in the water without both of these. We're doing our best to keep coring, but with limited pump function progress is extremely slow. All we scientists can do is watch with astonishment as this ridiculous string of equipment failures plays out, and do our best to help where we can to get things back on track. Of course, it would be much, much worse were it not for the beauty of this place we are living in. I realized I've been giving the sunsets here short shrift, but here is one. (TDP on facebook)