I'd actually be very surprised if Blackbeard is open pit mined....

I'd actually be very surprised if Blackbeard is open pit mined. Blackbeard (excluding Centurion) is shaping up with similar strike length / max true width metrics to BP33 (but obviously without yet having the proven depth). While BP33 was originally considered for an open pit mine, that thinking shifted to UG as the resource was found to extend deeper. Blackbeard however appears to also have the issue of part mineralisation until depths nearer 150m. That part mineralisation issue is going to reduce the quantity of mineralised pegmatite in the first 150m with consequential impacts on the open pit economics.

Part mineralisation could also be causing grief for CHR's drilling on other nearby pegmatites to Blackbeard. Consider the 60 degree blue line I've added to the picture. There is a distinct chance that this blue line would have come up as a near 200m NSI drill result that intersected a large length of non-mineralised pegmatite. NSI result, well it was worth trying - walk away from that target and try the next one.

Ouch. A slightly different deeper location on the same pegmatite and there was a potentially100m intercept (not true width) to be reported.