A Gold’n Day with a Minelab Excalibur A family vacation in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic provided the setting for this enthusiastic metal detectorist from Connecticut in January 2016. My choice was to go directly into the water and hunt. The beach at the resort where I stayed is situated so that often the breaking waves made water detecting dangerous. Yes, I was knocked off my feet by repeating waves. Kind of forced some of my searching to be in the sand. I normally hunt in all-metal mode at the beaches and take the time to dig even though there is a good possibility of the target being trash. It is so easy to scoop to leave the site cleaner.
I was waist / chest deep when the signal was clear and loud. Checked on discrimination, classic tone of a coin or jewelry. It seemed that the sand had shifted as this day at this location there was not much sand over the hardpan. The second dig had an 18 K (7.8 g) men’s yellow gold wedding ring in the scoop. It was twenty minutes later and roughly 40 feet along at the waist / chest depth that the next good target sounded. The discriminate tone again suggested this also would be a keeper. The first scoop brought another wedding ring; a ladies 18 K (3.1 g) yellow gold ring. A third ring, a spinner ring with “The Lord’s Prayer” inscribed in Spanish was also recovered from the water.
A Buck Fixed Blade Knife with a 5 inch blade was recovered from the sand. The knife, partially corroded had and dried sand on it; yet was sharp enough to inflict a serious injury to someone digging in the sand. A small silver (925) heart shaped pendent, inscribed “Dior” was also picked from the sand. Sixty seven coins were recovered: ½ - United States, ¼ - Dominican Republic Pesos and ¼ - other countries. The last keeper was a fishing lure. Nice condition with a sharp treble hook. The lure is now in my tackle box for the spring fresh water season. WOW - A pair of 18 kt. yellow gold rings on the same day! Fun in the sun.
Ken Carlson Danbury - CT, USA
