The British Geological Survey's (BGS's) Marine Geology Group served as our principal drilling consultants on both cruises of Leg 163X. Because of our previous experiences on Legs 152 and 163 with difficult drilling in shallow waters (<300 m) and bare rock conditions of the southeast Greenland shelf we elected to use a commercial vessel equipped with a wireline, high-speed diamond coring system for Leg 163X. In 1998 we chartered the commercial drilling vessel Norskald from SEATEAM, Ltd. Owing to an unforeseen failure of one of the ship's main generators caused by fire damage, we were forced to terminate the 1998 cruise after only six days (from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Reykjavik; 23–29 August). Two sites on Transect EG66 were drilled before termination of the cruise. This brief drilling program was successful in recovering 11 m of core representing two different igneous units. The limited amount of coring that was possible also provided us with insights into the suitability of the wireline seafloor template system for drilling in adverse Arctic conditions. Of greatest concern to us was the restricted maneuverability of the ship while on station with the seabed template on the seabed. We were also concerned about the time necessary to raise the seafloor template and drill string enough to move the ship in the event of an approaching iceberg. These concerns lead us to investigate the robotic drill system developed by the BGS. The BGS Rockdrill is a self-contained seafloor drilling platform powered by an umbilical cable and deployed by a winch system from a standard A-frame. The Rockdrill can be deployed and recovered quickly, whereas the umbilical cable link to the drill platform affords greater maneuverability of the ship while on station. This system, however, only provides a few meters of seabed penetration, but the many new drilling opportunities without sediment cover identified by the new Dana seismic data allowed us to establish an offset drilling strategy for more extensive stratigraphic coverage. As such, we selected the BGS Rockdrill for drilling operations in 1999 and chartered the Aranda from the Finnish Institute of Marine Research to serve as our operational platform. During this cruise from 21 August to 19 September (from Leith, Scotland, to Keflavik, Iceland), we drilled a total of 141 holes at 81 sites on Transects EG68, EG65, and EG64.