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Thursday, November 6th Port Alberni, BC

It had been two and half months since David’s life changed. There hadn’t been time to miss Nova Scotia. Life on the island was more active, those excess pounds were gone. Good life, he thought, and good people too. Hank had been instrumental in providing his trucks and crews, but Elliot’s contributions had been crucial – lending expert knowledge of where and how to obtain the necessary equipment, boring heads and generators.

His firm, Stevens Engineering, had thrived on the success of their fuel-cell conversion systems. With things going smooth, Elliot had made himself available to help David set up the operation at Cherry Creek, and was there at every opportunity. They had commissioned to have a full gravel overburden spread and compacted over the entire build site to eliminate mud, dust and dirt build-up; the pipe runs leading away from the site had been laid and buried. Later, after they punched through, the oil would be capped off until the full run of pipe to Bamfield was complete.
Near the well-head, they had constructed a 10 metre derrick and tower that would provide the stability for the diamond/carboloid boring head and the pipe extension insertions, as the well drilling depths increased. They were using the latest dual-pipe technology allowing for an outer sleeve/pipe of larger diameter and then a smaller pipe with the boring apparatus. This gave them constant water pressure extraction and earth/rock removal using a treadmill excavator belt to move material out and away from the well-head area. From there, the material could easily be hauled away without disrupting the drill site.

Around the perimeter, David had drilled and installed three concentric circles of seismic measuring pins. The pins were wired back to the construction trailer that had been brought in. The trailer provided him with an on-site laboratory as well as a fully computerised seismic measuring workstation to receive both analogue, white paper real-time readouts as well as digital information from the pins. David knew Vancouver Island was connected to the Seattle Ridge and fault line, and that periodically during the drilling operations, he would record tremors, but he was able to differentiate between earth tremors and those created by the drilling process.

So far, a big bonus had been offered up by the site. There had been no granite or hard rock contact by the drill heads, which accelerated progress and extended the life of each drill head.
Another great bonus was the crews Wilma put together. They had experience, she’d said, but for water well installations. He was delighted. Expert teams would have been nice, but what he needed were dedicated crews that would take the time to learn the techniques, and then proceed slowly, allowing their knowledge and expertise to grow as they penetrated deeper and deeper into the soil and layered crusts.

Ben Thompson, who had many years of well drilling experience, brought his people in and provided two shifts of workers. Whenever David could break away from the site, he went to the New Moon, for the home cooking, to say hi to Wilma, and to thank her, yet again, for Ben and his crews.