Drilling weathered rock with diamond is always slower, especially if you are going for triple tube and trying to get structure. 40m per day or 20m a shift is way optimistic, more like 8-12m a shift in really grotty saprolite. If they have swelling clays, you can lose 1-5 days waiting for the potassium salts to get sourced from the depot and getting the mud mixture right to stop the core blowing apart is an art.
I have seen holes around Horseshoe/Cassidy that were completely weathered to 300m down hole. At Sipa's Enigma, 430m below surface. So it's not unknown for weathering to be exceptionally deep in these Prot rocks, but I'd expect the usual to be 100-120m down hole. Full fresh (AKA Top Of Fresh Rock or TOFR) in this part of the world is up to 150m down hole in altered volcanics.
So, probably 7-9 days of drilling, then they have to log the hole (2-4 days on that), cut it (1 day) hotshot to the lab (1 day) and assay (7 days minimum). 14-18 days.
AUR Price at posting:
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