The Curse of Oak Island: DRILLING OPERATION Exposes Major Tunnel (Season 10)

Could be an interesting day on the island.
Geologist Terry Matheson, surveyor Steve Guptill, and Oak Island historian Paul Troutman continue monitoring the core drilling operation in borehole 8.5 N-13.5.
Sense encountering a mysterious 10-foot void at a depth of 55 feet just one day ago, the team has decided to keep drilling below the 100-foot level in the hopes of once again encountering the wooden tunnel that may be heading toward the nearby Garden shaft.

The golden… What do you got there?
This is gonna be 108.
108, okay.
Excuse me.

So I’m just carving this up, carving this turkey up here, see what we got.
It still looks pretty loose, Terry.
Yeah, well it’s loose right there, but then it seems to stiffen up here.
I don’t see any wood.
It’s firm at the top and then loose, okay.
This is all really loose, you know. I don’t think we’re gonna get much.
Yeah, it’s somewhat disturbed.
Everything is loose and that’s what happens when you’re close to a structure.
I wish I had definitive evidence. I wish I had a couple chunks of wood in here.
Yeah, then you’re going to know that the proof is in the drilling.

I said, “Hey, guys, check out the garden shop.”
Man, look at that.
Bubbles.
Wow, look at that! Oh, wow, look, it’s probably really good actually.
So Terry, yes, there are indeed air bubbles in the garden.
Okay, it’s on the right-hand side, right next to a rare rock.
We’re actually transmitting pressure as they case forward from the drill rig along that tunnel over into the garden shaft.
Yes, we know there’s a tunneling system under there that may connect to the Garden shaft.
And that’s really exciting for us because we could potentially tunnel to the treasury.

I sent the guys a text, let them know what’s going on in this hole.
Super, that’s perfect.
We should go get the samples for the water and the air bubbles in the garden.
Steve, so we have a collection here, but we’ll take a look.

In the hopes of obtaining more evidence of precious metals from deep underground near the garden shaft, Paul and Steve collect a water sample that will be analyzed by geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner.

Rick, how you doing?
What’s up?
Right now, we’ve got really interesting outcomes very close to the Garden shaft.
Down as far as 108, it’s very loose, no wood.
But I mean, that level of disruption or disturbance tells me that we met the political structure.
Yes, there were air bubbles about 108 to 115. We actually started seeing air bubbles in the front and the back of this rock that’s on the right-hand side of the garden.
So, uh, interesting. Bubbles in the pond over here, bubbles in the garden, in the garden shaft.
The garden, yeah.

What do you make of that?
I don’t know, that’s very odd.
We were surprised to see the air escape from the area of the garden shaft but excited about it for one simple reason.
It means there’s a void or voids down there, possibly a tunnel connected to a garden shaft, and we need to devise some sort of plan where we can explore that area.
This area in particular, probably more than any other area over the last 10 years, this is probably the most interesting.

Agreed.
Yeah, here’s what I think. You ought to keep on keeping on, all right?
Keep going, guys.
Thanks, everybody. Take care now.

The following morning…
I think we’re all really excited about the garden shaft, Craig.
Why the garden shaft? What interests you about it?
The water sample had gold in it.
Yeah, let’s not forget that.

Rick, Marty, Craig, and other members of the team have gathered in the war room for their highly anticipated meeting regarding a new method to search for answers deep in the Money Pit area.
Doug reached out to a company called Dumas. Well, today their team is going to meet with us.
Steve, if you can get them up?

Hey, guys. Hey, gentlemen.
Thank you to everyone for the ability to present Dumas’s vision and means and methods for the garden shaft rehabilitation project.
We’re just very happy to be here today.
Based in Timmins, Ontario, Canada, Dumas Contracting Limited is one of the leading mine shaft construction and engineering companies in North America.
My name is Cameron Carter. I’m the vice president of engineering and business development for Dumas Contracting Limited.
Joining me today was Mr. Tony Linton. Tony Linton is our in-house shaft sinking technical expert with our operational team in Timmins.
Joining us, I do have a presentation that might help to illustrate that methodology.

First, there is an existing 10 by 10 wood crib shaft to approximately 77 and a half feet depth.
The objective here is to refurbish this shaft and make it safe for further exploration along the length of the shaft.
We are going to expose the shaft collar and build our foundation.
We will mock out the backfill from the existing floor of the shaft. Our intention is to re-line the shaft as it currently exists in order to preserve what was there.
Also, what we’re going to do is inject grout into the surrounding soils to slow down any water infiltration into the shaft.
That will ensure the long-term stability of this shaft excavation.

Brilliant.
We will continue to construct the manway section to make this shaft accessible again for personnel.
Oh, wait a minute. Are we, the fellowship members here, going to be able to actually go underground in that shaft once it’s complete?
Yep.
Wow, this is really cool.

So as we descend into the garden shaft, we can guide you and bring you down into the excavation.
Okay, I think the chance to come down and explore that shaft is one of the most important things.
Yep, we’ve encountered what we deem to be potential offset chambers or voids in the ground.
So we’re starting to collect some data for you guys and maybe give you some targets.
That’s fantastic because we are going to be probe drilling as we descend into the shaft to recognize and quantify where those voids exist.
Okay, all right, we’ll see if we hit something. Avoid whatever, something. I’d say, I don’t know, 50 feet, and we want to tunnel out from there.

Would we be able to do that?
To answer your question, Marty, we can go in any direction at any elevation.
Okay, that’s great, really cool.

In order to allow members of the Oak Island team to descend and explore the garden shaft, representatives from Dumas will construct a concrete foundation around the existing structure, excavated with a massive crane and hammer grab, and then reconstruct it with new waterproof wooden timbers down to a depth of at least 77 feet, the believed total depth of the shaft.
The objective, again, is to rehabilitate the garden shaft.
Rehab project will provide several unique opportunities.
You can either tunnel or expand the shaft.
You can go deeper with a shot to me. It’s always about the eyes and boots approach, and we will have a legitimate, for the first time, Eisenberg’s approach to the Money Pit from start to finish.

What’s the estimated time to completion?
Right now we’re forecasting approximately 50 days of in-the-hole rehabilitation work to get us to 77 and a half feet.
Perfect.

We’ve never been able to go underground in a Money Pit, and yet everyone before us for 200 and some years has been underground, but that’s an aside.
We believe that the garden shaft will supply us with some greater understanding of The Money Pit.
What has been done not only in the previous 227 years, but perhaps what was done originally, what we call the depositional phase.

The idea of rehabilitating a shaft so we can get underground is exciting because actually being there, actually getting down and seeing things is always the best data.
And I think we can trace the gold in the water, then we can find the treasure if it’s here and figure out what exactly happened on this island.
I think we need to get down underground. That’s where I’m at.
Absolutely.

[Music]
Thank you.