Rick Lagina: “This Is The Best Day Of My Entire Life!”

In the moment, I’m an eyes and boots guy.
I’m down there; I want to get that clay out of the hole.
I want to find the tunnel.
I didn’t think of much else, to be honest.

From the discovery of a tunnel that is said to be located underneath one of the most interesting treasure-hunting spots on the island to the discovery of several artifacts, here’s how Rick Lagina had the best day of his entire life.

Is it true? Could it be possible that the Lagina brothers have actually come across the treasure of Oak Island?
Well, let’s see if this is true, especially as the Lagina brothers have instructed the representatives of the Duma contracting company to perform a probe drilling operation at the base of the garden shaft.

This was being done so that the team could see if they could find a tunnel that was thought to be located just below the garden shaft.
If the tunnel predates the shaft, it makes the tunnel far more interesting than just finding a previously unknown tunnel.
It’s all good news, yes!

They were especially eager to see if the tunnel was at the depth of about 91 ft below the surface.
As such, the Dumas contracting company had to make sure that they approached this operation one step at a time.
As such, the first thing that the Dumas Contracting Company set out to do was to drop a sewer camera into the hole of the garden shaft, while also making sure that they install a casing which would ensure that there would be no collapse or failure when they go on with the next phases of the probe drilling operation.

While the representatives of the Duma Contracting Company were busy with this probe drilling operation, it looked as though something interesting was taking place over Lot 5.
Both Jack Begley and Laird Nien were there at the right time to come across what they recognized to be red pottery.
These discoveries were made on different levels of the circular building.

That wasn’t all they discovered; when the pair got onto Lot 5 while they were still there, Jack had also come across some charcoal, which was an exciting find because it was possible for the charcoal to be used for carbon dating.

As much as these discoveries were a source of excitement for the team, it looked as though Laird was dissatisfied with the progress that they were making that day.
“Jamie, look at this! Look what you find. I’m finding some red earth, and we’re here! That’s exciting! Hey, Laird, you might want to come have a look at this.”

“All right, that’s incredible! I think we found some red ware!”

In order to improve on this, Laird decided to increase the amount of digging that the team had to do.
As a result, the team came across some clay that seemed to have some fragments of wood in it.

Thanks to a sewer camera that they installed back in the garden shaft, hoping to find this tunnel that they were looking for on the other side of these fragments of wood, Laird decided that the best thing to do was to drill through the wood.

While this was going on, Jack was looking at the area around him before he came up with an interesting hypothesis.
Apparently, upon performing a survey of the area, he was able to guess that the structure found in Lot 5 may be the hole that may be under the hatch that they found on Zena Halper’s map.

Upon hearing this, Laird decided that he was going to make a request for mechanical assistance to help them with removing the large stones that they found in the area.
This takes our mind to the lead barter token that they found some time ago.

Apparently, it was a virtual match to the lead cross that they found some time ago.
According to the results of the laser ablation testing that they performed on the two items, the biggest result is that isotopically it looks very similar to the cross.

“No way!”

This told them that the items were also from the south of France and could be traced back to the 1300s.
Imagine that! Could it be that the French beat the likes of Christopher Columbus to the Americas all those years ago?
That would be an interesting claim to make.

Back in the swamp, Gary came across a copper doorknob that was found on a ramp that seemed to be hiding mud spoils.
Eager to make more progress with their work there and the discoveries that they were making, Alex and Peter decided to search around for more parts of the ramp, and that’s when they came across some of its corners.

As this was going on, the rest of the team was watching keenly as the Duma contracting company was performing its probe drilling operation.
They all watched as the drilling machine eventually failed to drill through something that was wedged in the ground in the garden shaft.

“Moving slowly… Oh yeah, oh, it’s unbelievable. Is she spinning? Copy? Roger, copy, go ahead. I don’t know where we’re hitting, but we’re not gaining any ground. Man, oh man, oh man, talk about being close and not being able to get there!”

Looking for answers, the team extracted the drill bit from the shaft.
This was when they came across a tiny piece of wood.
As exciting as this piece of wood was for all those who wanted to take a good look at it, they would eventually be disappointed by the piece of wood because it was too small to perform any carbon dating experiments on it.

Eager to make more progress with their work, the crew decided that the next step in their operations ought to be that they increased the size of the hole to six inches.
This would allow them to make use of a larger drill bit, which in turn should pierce whatever is causing the blockage in the garden shaft hole.

As interesting as the results of this larger drill may be for the members of the team and those watching The Curse of Oak Island TV show back at home, they may have become tense when they learned that this decision was made because the team found that they were quickly running out of time.

Well, soon the team and the viewers back home had something truly exciting to ponder on.
“We think there’s a tunnel under there, and this tunnel is especially enigmatic because it appears to have dissolved metals underneath the garden shaft.
The tunnel we’re hoping leads to an offset chamber, which is another name for a vault. That’s one very exciting and interesting thing!”

This was something that Laird seemed to have come across.
He believed that this was the bottom of the circular structure, and after giving it a short lookover, he decided that it did not sound solid to him.
Could this mean that there was a large treasure close to the garden shaft?

Well, this was what Marty wanted to know.
To his and every other person’s excitement, Dr. Spooner told them that they had definitely narrowed their search area to a region to boost the prospects of something truly exciting.

Gary Drayton, one of the metal detector experts on the team, showed up with a metal detector so that he could wade into the waters at the bottom of the garden shaft.
During the scan of the area, the metal detector picked up the presence of non-ferrous metals.

“This is a non-ferrous target. This could be gold. It could be silver. It could be copper. Either way, it’s a great sounding signal! Gary, you’re the man!”

That was so much fun!
This is interesting because they could have been in the wood, soil, and water samples which showed traces of gold in them.
Eager to get to the bottom of this, Marty decided that it was best to get a large excavator to that spot so that it would take some of the larger boulders out of the outskirts of Lot 5’s circular construction.

It was actually about time as well because Laird had asked for this some time ago in the last episode of The Curse of Oak Island TV show.
Either way, work was able to proceed with the Duma contracting company making use of a six-inch drill bit.

With this equipment, they were able to perform some more of their probe drilling in the garden shaft.
With any luck, this larger drill bit will not be impeded in the same manner that the smaller four-inch one was.

This may have led to the discovery of 1,300 lead tokens and half coins.
Funny enough, the half coin seems to be an identical match to the lead cross that Gary and Rick were lucky to come across when they took a small expedition to Smith’s Cove back in 2017.

“Oh, holy shmolley! All right, it’s a cross! That’s a cross! Oh my gosh, I mean, that is an old, old cross!”

As fascinating as this was for the team, they soon found that their hands were tied as their time there was limited.
As a result, they resolved to return to the area with more resources in 2023.

This allowed the team to convene to the war room for one of their famous meetings, with Craig Tester making an appearance via a video call.
He was able to inform the team that a stick was found behind the second layer of pebbles that were found on the ramp in the swamp earlier and had been carbon dated to a range of 1495 to 1656.

This was exciting, but not as exciting as when the probe hit something as they lowered it into the shaft.
“Probably some wood or the side of something. When you think about it, wood delineates manmade things, obviously, when it’s way underground. So we need to keep going. We could be closer than we’ve ever been to this actual treasure or to where it was deposited