Due to work commitments, I haven’t been getting out detecting as much as I would’ve liked to lately. So when I was able to get a Monday off work, I had no hesitation in planning on getting a good few hours of beach detecting in! Heading out early before dawn, I was armed with my CTX 3030, CTX 17 and CTX 11 coils and a flask of coffee...
When I arrived at the beach it was low tide, so I planned on hitting the wet sand, first with the 17” coil, then maybe switching to the 11” for some faster detecting on the dry sand. The settings I was using were:
- Mode – Coins, set to 50 conductive tones.
- Response – Smooth
- Recovery – Fast
- Recovery – Deep
- Seawater – On
- Target separation – Ground Coin
- Pinpoint – Normal
This particular beach is very popular and gets a good workout from other hunters, so it was no surprise that things were slow to start with. After about 10 minutes I had my first target, from down a couple of scoops, which looked like a well encrusted medallion. A short while later I was onto a patch of hard packed black sand, which from experience I knew can cause havoc with detectors, however the CTX 3030 kept humming away as if the black sand wasn’t there. Right in the middle of this area I got a good solid signal and after a couple of scoops and a rinse I could see in the pre-dawn light that I had a ring in the scoop! Between my dodgy eyesight and the lack of light I couldn’t tell what it was made from but from the weight of it I was pretty sure I was onto some gold. Working back along the wet sand I had an iffy sort of signal which was about four scoops down, so over a foot deep. It was another ring, but very crusty, so a clean at home would be needed for that one. After that, things were slow and an hour later with the rings and roughly $7 in my pouch I decided to move to another beach.
The next beach isn’t as popular for swimming and as such doesn’t see many detectorists, but is usually good for a few dollars. As with the first beach I headed for the wet sand first as the tide was still low but starting to come in. The first target was a fifty-cent coin, then not far on a two-dollar coin. Then the fun really started! I began getting targets every few paces, and most were two-dollar coins. On at least half a dozen occasions I had two or three targets within the arc of a swing. This kept going until suddenly things went quite, I kept working my way along the beach for a little while without a signal, so I turned back and soon enough I was back into the money. I worked this sloping bank for about an hour as the tide came in, with plenty of coins, a small ring and some other jewelry coming out of the sand. Eventually though with the waves making digging difficult and two tired arms, I headed for home.
A clean up of the finds resulted in one 9ct gold ring, a silver earring, what appeared to be a silver pendant? Also, two junk rings and just over $70 in coins! What I thought was a medallion turned out to be just a one-dollar coin. Not a bad effort for a few hours work! Why the beach was washing coins out of this short stretch, I don’t know. I do know though, that I was in the right place at the right time. So while research and planning goes a long way to being successful, sometimes random luck can play a big part too.
Until next time, happy detecting - and may ‘lady luck’ smile upon you!
You can see more about my detecting adventures on my YouTube channel “Westcoast Mark” http://www.youtube.com/user/Thedeepbluediver and my own blog http://westcoastmark.wordpress.com/
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