Westhaven Ventures (TSX-V:WHN, OTC:WTHVF) put out a drilling update Wednesday morning which gave investors a lot to look forward to in the new year. While many investors were hoping to get assays from hole SN18-18, the lab has been slower than expected and it looks like SN18-18 assays will arrive in early January. However, Westhaven gave us a lot to chew on including the discovery of a 2nd (separate) vein zone at Shovelnose which led to all five holes (SN18-18 through SN18-22) being drilled substantially deeper than originally planned.
In all Westhaven completed five holes which totaled 2,183 meters:
SN18-18: 337 meters (multiple occurrences of VG, separate vein zone intersected)
SN18-19: 416 meters (encountered veining despite significant cross-faulting and displacement of the main vein zone)
SN18-20: 528 meters (separate vein zone intersected)
SN18-21: 482 meters (multiple occurrences of VG, separate vein zone intersected)
SN18-22: 420 meters (separate vein zone intersected)
Two of the holes drilled (SN18-18 and SN18-21) intersected multiple occurrences of visible gold (VG) and hole SN18-22 has not been logged yet so it remains to be seen whether there is VG in this core as well. More importantly, much of the VG in SN18-18 and SN18-21 is associated with ‘ginguro banding’ which can be visually identified by darker bands within a silver texture quartz vein. At the Hishikari mine in Japan (one of the highest grade gold mines in the history of the world) the visible gold is typically a result of the ginguro banding becoming “saturated” with gold and the rest of the gold ends up getting dumped and shows up as VG. In other words VG in ginguro banding can be indicative of very high grades (20+ g/t Au), and in the case of SN 18-14 this has proven to be true as multiple occurrences of VG in ginguro banding resulted in 17.7 meters grading 24.5 g/t gold and 108 g/t silver.
This is what 948 g/t gold and 3,720 g/t silver looks like at Hishikari:
And here is some core from SN18-21 at Westhaven’s Shovelnose Project:
Section of bladed quartz after calcite and ginguro banding
VG or visible electrum (silver/gold) in ginguro banding which is consistent with high-grade core seen from Hishikari.
A second vein zone is very good news because it’s indicative of a larger, well endowed epithermal system. With the discovery of this second vein zone, it’s management’s belief that there’s likely many more vein zones to be found. This has dramatically changed the potential at Shovelnose as, the more veins you have, the higher the probability that you’ll be able to prove up a significant sized gold deposit. As Westhaven is seeing both ginguro banding and VG in this second vein zone, it has the potential to be just as good, if not better, than what has been encountered in the first vein zone.
Westhaven VP of Exploration Peter Fischl is excited about this new vein zone and hole SN19-01 (the first one to be drilled next year) will be a 100 meter step-out to the east of SN18-18, Peter thinks this hole will reach the “preferred horizon” of the 2nd vein zone, where the higher/highest gold grades could be.
It’s easy to see by the placement and direction of the most recent drill holes that Westhaven is learning that this system extends to the east/southeast and the company is working on numerous targets which will be drilled in Q1 2019. As it stands now Westhaven is planning to initiate another drill program in early 2019.
Westhaven is in a unique position at Shovelnose with easy access to site and low drilling costs relative to a lot of other exploration companies. There is no doubt that the best information is generated from drilling and Westhaven has already learned a lot with a relatively small amount of drilling. Since we are dealing with veins Peter and the geo team can garner a lot of info from vein orientations and alteration – expect them to learn even more over the next few weeks as they consolidate the data they have gathered in the last couple of months to help Westhaven better target the next set of drill holes at Shovelnose.
Westhaven is fully funded for this next phase of drilling with C$600,000 currently in the treasury (after paying for all drilling and assays in the latest program) and the company expects a tax rebate from the government totaling approximately C$600,000 to arrive in late February. Westhaven doesn’t need any money right now but they don’t deny that they’ve been offered “more money than we would know what to do with” from multiple sources in recent weeks. However, Westhaven management believes that their stock is worth more than C$1.00 per share and don’t feel any need to rush and jump into a financing. Westhaven Chairman and largest shareholder Gren Thomas is a wealthy man and the company has no shortage of financing options.
News flow should be steady and significant beginning in January with assays, geophysics programs including IP and CSAMT (a geophysical tool that Peter found very useful in his work at the Kupol Mine in Russia), resumption of drilling, and several other initiatives the company is working on. There’s a saying that the best things in life come to those who wait and for Westhaven shareholders this saying may be especially meaningful as rushed assays from SN18-14 and SN18-15 also arrived after a slightly longer than expected wait.
Disclosure: Author owns shares of Westhaven Ventures at the time of publishing.
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