We are beginning to make some progress on opening the hole - we are now below 6300' and continuing to make good progress. We've had a few of the expected hang-ups with shaking down the equipment. Most have been fairly trivial that have cost us an hour here and there, and a few others that can be deferred until we have some down-time to deal with. We even got some sun, finally (see attached). However, it looks like la Nina (the aftermath of el Nino) is going to be a wet one for Hilo - we've probably had a foot of rain since the rig arrived. I may not have mentioned earlier that, when the mast went up, we were able to re-install the microwave link to the UH-Hilo campus so that we can now send and receive e-mail at the site. And, for future reference, we have a Post Office box to which snail mail can be sent: HSDP P.O. Box 5073 Hilo, HI 96720