Bad Weather Brings Good Results!

I love getting down to the beach on a warm summer's morning -  calm seas, sunshine and the chance to pick up some recently dropped goodies.  What really excites me though is seeing on the weather forecast that a storm is brewing and the winds will be coming from the right direction to cut the beach back!

Over the years I’ve taken note of what happens to the sand at the beach during rough weather.  Sometimes it will strip the sand away and yet finds will be few and far between, or a storm can deposit vast amounts of fresh sand onto a beach.  However when mother nature gets her ducks in a row with strong winds from the right direction coupled with an extra high tide you can expect to make some good finds.  This was the case recently and as an added bonus it coincided with my days off.

When I’m detecting with my CTX 3030 on the beach I generally keep the top half of my screen open so I don't miss any small gold.  I like to have my audio in 50 Conductive tones, Seawater on, Recovery Deep off and trash set to Low Trash.

My day went something like this: I arrived at the beach at around 4.30 am to catch the low tide.  Armed with my CTX 3030 with the CTX 17 coil, I was greeted with a cut beach running as far as I could see along the coast and ranging in depth from about 0.6m (2ft) to about 1.8m (6ft) deep.  I knew that most of the beach had lost its sand last winter, so there was just one short section a couple of hundred metres (yards) long that I was interested in.  This section had in the past produced some older pre-decimal silver coins and rings, so I was keen to see what I could find this time as it looked like the beach was cutting back further then I had seen before.

With the waves washing in up to my knees and back out again, I worked my way back and forth along this section of beach for over five hours.  At times I didn’t even need the detector as there would be coins left sitting on the sand as the waves receded.  At one point as I was retrieving a target when I looked down and saw a fifty-cent piece beside me, a five-cent next to that and a two-dollar coin just past that!  It is quite amazing to be on a beach as it cuts, as every few minutes sand would wash away exposing new targets.

Finally though, I needed to call it a day as my shoulder was starting to get sore from the constant swinging.  I headed home, counted up my finds and had a well-deserved rest.

However, beach cuts like this do not come along every day, so after dinner I headed back for another session. This time I had the CTX 11 coil on to give my shoulder a bit of a rest.  I had only been going a few minutes before I had a silver ring in my scoop.  Then it was coin after coin again.  After about half an hour, I had a faint low tone that after digging out a couple of scoops  of sand turned out to be a nice little gold ring.  I kept going for another couple of hours then needed to head home as I had work the next day.

So what was the tally from about seven hours of detecting?  Over 200 coins, of which 13 were silver and over 60 were one and two cent pieces.  The modern coins added up to just over $74.  Three silver rings, a couple of bits of silver jewellery and one gold ring, as well as some junk jewellery.  Not a bad day’s work!

So next time you have some stormy weather at the very least go and have a look at what the beach is doing to give you an idea of what to expect.  It might be too rough or sanding in, but when it all comes together, you can be guaranteed of some awesome detecting!

Until next time, enjoy the history you find!

You can see more about my detecting adventures on my YouTube channel “Westcoast Mark”  and my own blog http://westcoastmark.wordpress.com/.