We have made reasonable progress after getting back to bottom and starting to open new hole. However, the pillow interval below ~8600' proved to be some very tough rock. We don't know why this should be so because it appears to be no different from the pillows above, but the drilling rates dropped to as low as two to three feet per hour in parts of this interval. Nonetheless, we made it to about 9100' (2774 m) as of mid-day yesterday but then we hit a lost circulation zone in the rubbly pillows. Then, just below that, we encountered another pressurized zone that came after us. Because the bit was pretty worn, we elected to pull out and do another cement/re-drill routine - that process is currently underway right now. There was some hint in the wear pattern of the last bit that we might have jumped out of the core hole - as soon as the current bit comes out, we will evaluate it to see whether it looks the same. In any event, we are planning to run a single-shot deviation tool with each bit change so we can monitor the hole angle.