At the Smith's Cove upper beach, Choice Drilling sinks exploratory borehole OITC-6 ten feet northwest of a previous hole that had revealed dynamite residue from the Oak Island Treasure Company's 1897 blasting operation at a depth of 95 feet. In a core sample from roughly 51 feet, Paul Troutman and geologist Terry Matheson identify two pieces of hand-cut wooden beams separated by two feet of moist earth. Matheson notes the wood closely resembles the timber used to build the pre-1795 slipway uncovered the previous season, and the undisturbed quality of the soil above it suggests the beams predate any known searcher activity. Surveyor Steve Guptill maps the borehole's position and reveals a striking alignment: a line drawn from OITC-6 through Wall 2 and the U-shaped structure extends directly toward the Money Pit area. A second borehole drilled along the same alignment yields only maroon till at 54 feet with no trace of wood, though the team acknowledges they remain uncertain of the exact angle at which a flood tunnel would run between Smith's Cove and the Money Pit.
In the War Room, Rick Lagina and Craig Tester meet with fellow landowner Tom Nolan to discuss excavating the triangle-shaped swamp, where earlier drilling revealed hard targets including a 200-foot ship-shaped anomaly, a possible stone wharf, and a circular rock and metal formation at the swamp's northern point. Tom, who joined the team as a full-time member following his father Fred's death in 2016, estimates three to six feet of organic overgrowth now covers whatever lies beneath. Craig outlines two options for managing the waterlogged conditions: the inflatable bladder system previously used at Smith's Cove, or a fabric-and-weight method that creates a dam as excavation progresses. Rick, Marty, and Steve Guptill then walk the swamp with cofferdam manufacturer Jack Nichols, whose patented inflatable dam system had proved essential during the Smith's Cove excavation three years earlier. Steve maps the proposed dig area at roughly one acre with 500 feet of frontage, and Nichols, drawing on over 30 years of construction experience, confirms the application is feasible.
On the western shore of Lot 21, near the foundation of Daniel McGinnis's former home, metal detection expert Gary Drayton and Charles Barkhouse recover a copper half penny bearing a young Queen Victoria dated to approximately the 1840s, followed by an unusual decorative brooch featuring twin coils of rope surmounted by a leaf with 13 branches. The same lot had previously yielded a gold-plated brooch estimated at 700 years old and two iron swages dated to roughly 600 years ago. Alex Lagina and archaeologist Laird Niven bring the brooch 50 miles north to Acadia University in Wolfville, where professional conservator Kelly Bourassa cleans it using wooden skewers and a glass fiber brush. Bourassa states it is unlike anything he has seen before, possibly a commissioned piece with a maritime character, and finds no maker's mark. At the Mug and Anchor pub in Mahone Bay, the team counts 13 branches on the leaf, connecting it to researcher Cort Lindahl's theory linking Oak Island to George Washington's Pine Tree Flag and the number 13's significance in both Freemasonry and the Knights Templar. Lindahl had proposed that Louis Alexandre Rochefoucauld revealed Oak Island's secret to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and that treasure from the island helped finance the American Revolution. The team agrees to pursue ground-penetrating radar on Lot 21.
Back in the War Room, Craig presents carbon-14 results for the wood recovered from OITC-6. The most likely date range falls between 1735 and 1784, placing it 11 to 60 years before the Money Pit's discovery in 1795. Jack Begley urges immediate excavation, but Marty and Craig advocate a measured approach: continue drilling along the same alignment to establish a second data point and determine the tunnel's cardinal direction before committing to a full dig at 50 feet below the Smith's Cove beach.
