Day Four of our expedition started off late intentionally with a Commander ordered "sleep in as needed" to allow my hard working engineers and assistant engineers to recover from a night of hard work under very adverse conditions.

My two visiting engineers Paul and Artemis were hard at work until 03:30 in morning with Anthony playing "Colossuses of Rhodes" to provide light for Paul's engineering work. This of course meant that someone had to be on HABcom while the engineering "out of sim" EVA was in progress per mission safety rules. So I stayed up to perform the HABcom duty myself until the three remaining taskmasters were safely inside for the night.

Internally, Kevin our HVAC Engineer did a great job with the help of Adam and Felipe on the final heating duct installation. The upper deck was treated to the occasional odors of a saw mill for a few hours as Adam drilled holes for Kevin to place and sealing in the last of new heating ducts. The toilet is now no longer the coldest room in the Hab. They finished this task around 02:00 and I sent them off to bed.

Paul and Anthony worked in the Green Hab transferring power over from an extension cord to the new undergound conduit. After four hours of heavy rains eased off, they attempted to get the water pump in the Engineering area to send water up to the HAB's internal tank. Although the pump appeared to be pumping water after they reset the GFI breaker in the tanks pump box, upon return to the Hab they discovered nothing was being sent up the line. Paul and I discussed this and I suggested that a small submersible pump may be needed to prime the main high pressure pump because of the back pressure from the 300 feet of underground water line to the Hab and switched it off for the night.

We must have been tired because Anthony ambushed us with his camera and caught the two commanders brushing their teeth in synch. Sorry folks but that one will remain a "family" photo only.

Artemis surface briefly at 07:00 to load and activate the bread maker. She is firmly convinced that after many years of faithful service it is finally dying and has informed me that the bread maker must be replaced if future crews are to enjoy the moral lifting daily fresh bread.

Everyone was up around 10:00 at which point breakfast was taken per individual preferences and I ordered strict water conversation into effect as we had just enough water in the pipes to keep us hydrated while we went about our various tasks until such time as Paul and crew got water flow from the Engineering area to the Hab reestablished.

I delegated Anthony to HABcom, so that he could tackle the marking of assignment papers his students were e-mailing him. Artemis spent the morning assisting Paul by "switch flipping" as needed and made in roads into the various journalistic assignments for the media back in The Netherlands who are following the adventures of their analogue Mars-naut.

Around 12:00 noon the UPS's cut in for about 30 seconds and we lost comms with Earth. Anthony went into trouble shooting mode and got us back on line. Events were to occur later on that Anthony will fill you in on in his Comms Failure Report, but comms wise it was an interesting day to say the least. Just before 13:00 our resident Martian Don showed up to transport to Paul to town for a telephone call.

At 13:00 I gave Felipe his first EVA briefing and we headed down to the Surface Excursion Activity suit room. Artemis got Felipe fitted out in an analogue suit and very professionally taught him the steps of donning an analogue suit and getting ready an EVA. I then suited myself up and had Artemis check me over and we entered the airlock after a successful comms check.

At 13:38 after a 5 minute simulated depressurisation I cracked the airlock door and Dr. Felipe Broenring from Porto Alegre, Brazil stepped out onto analogue Mars at MDRS for his first Surface Excursion Activity. Details of his adventures are covered in the EVA Three report.

After getting back from our EVA we all had a short lunch and Paul returned from Hankville for necessary telephone communications purposes. Paul quickly finished up a wiring job that had been in progress earlier and then started to pack everything up for the trip home. Due to the amount of refit engineering equipment piled around the Hab and in the Hab this quickly turned into an all hands event.

Don reappeared around 19:45 just as we were finishing the clean up to load out his personal equipment he had on loan to the Hab. Paul finished his extended (between repairs and refit tasks) hand over briefing, including how to light the pilot in the gas oven and briefing Anthony and Kevin on "punch list" tasks he was leaving the capable hands of the Pisces One's engineers.

At 20:30 hours Artemis and Paul said their goodbyes and Hugh and Paul (both former military) saluted each other at the airlock threshold. Hugh formally thanked Paul for the great job Crew 34 had done and formally took over all responsibility for the Mars Desert Research Station. Up until then, Hugh had delegated the refit engineering to them with assistance from his team as they needed it.

After watching them blast off for Earth, we closed the airlock door and headed upstairs into our now very spacious Hab for report writing and a Mexican prepared by Kevin and Adam.

At this time we have just endured another cloud burst, so the state of the ground outside is once again questionable but plans are afoot for Felipe to lead EVA Four and take out EVA trainees Kevin and Adam for their first "in-sim" Surface Excursion Activity tomorrow morning. There is still much internal cleaning and dusting still to do but once again, the South West HAB is a Research Station.

Good night from the crew of Pisces One Expediton, the MDRS Crew 35 on analogue Mars, to all of you on the Pale Blue Dot, our home we call Earth.