With time running short in the season, Rick Lagina pushes forward on multiple fronts while Marty and Craig Tester attend to business. Charles Barkhouse selects a drilling target just north of the previous year's borehole, at a spot he believes based on decades of research is the actual location of the original Money Pit rather than where most searchers have assumed it to be. Using a cyclone reverse circulation drilling system, which forces air and water into the hole and pushes debris up through a sample bag, driller Jordan Rogers begins boring toward a depth of 200 feet. Early returns bring up black, foul-smelling wood that Dan Henskee identifies as potentially very old. At 160 feet, the drill hits bedrock, but the team pushes deeper with casing removed.
At 171 feet, the drill drops with no resistance for seven feet, then continues falling. The total void extends from 171 to 192 feet, a 21-foot cavity deep within the island. The discovery is significant because the Chappell vault found by William Chappell and Frederick Blair in 1897 was reported as approximately seven feet high and covered in a concrete-like substance sealed with clay. A cavity three times that height, located even deeper, suggests either a much larger structure or a second vault below the first. Jordan is unable to drill the bottom due to excessive flooding, so the team collects the muddy returns and hauls them uphill for scanning.
Jack Begley scans the sediment from the 171-foot void with a Minelab CTX 3030 metal detector and gets a non-ferrous hit. He isolates a small metal object that appears to have three vertical slash marks on one end and what looks like an overlay or plating. The team notes that the object's shape bears a curious resemblance to the outline of Oak Island itself. While they cannot identify it in the field, they consider it potentially significant as it came directly from the deep void and resolve to have it analyzed.
Rick brings a special visitor to the island: 91-year-old Lynn Walsh, granddaughter of Maynard Kaiser, who became the second victim of the Oak Island curse on March 26, 1897, when a cable snapped while he was being lifted out of the Money Pit, causing him to fall more than 100 feet to his death. Walsh reveals that her grandfather's body was never recovered, raising the possibility that it was washed into the flood tunnels by seawater and might even be connected to the mysterious remains reportedly seen at the bottom of 10-X, just 180 feet away. Rick takes Walsh to the memorial Dan Blankenship erected in 1995 commemorating the six men who died in the treasure hunt and commits to pursuing answers about Kaiser's fate.
World-renowned diver John Chatterton arrives on Oak Island. Using an umbilical-supplied breathing system rather than scuba tanks, Chatterton descends 10-X with his partner serving as topside support. He successfully passes through the eight-foot casing and enters the 27-inch shaft. At 204 feet, he encounters the drill bar and his breathing apparatus becomes snagged on the obstruction. The surface team hears the word "stuck" and tensions spike. Chatterton remains calm, carefully maneuvers his body free, and manages to work past the drill bar to continue his descent through the narrow passage. The episode ends with Chatterton reporting he has reached the bottom of the shaft and entered the chamber.
