 |
| Turtle Trail Friday Morning. |
Here are a couple photographs of Turtle Trail beach that DJ took yesterday morning. You can see the additional sand.
 |
| Turtle Trail Beach Friday Morning. |
You can see the posts barely stick outing of the sand now.
Thanks DJ.
---
Al C. also is interesting in opinions of this object he found a few weeks ago.
 |
| Mystery Object For ID. Find and photo by Al C. |
---
For me 2020 has not been the best of years in some ways - in fact in some big ways it has been a terrible year, but the metal detecting has not been bad.
Back in the spring there were many good 1715 Fleet finds, and the fall has been good too. We had two months in the spring that produced a good number of nice finds and October and November have produced nice shipwreck finds as well.
We needed a good year. People were talking, as they always do about everything being found and all the competition. But as we saw this year, the finds are still out there and the technology and your knowledge level keeps growing.
Several times in the past I've mentioned the best metal detecting months for finding old items. While the calm waters of summer are good for both the salvage teams and shallow water jewelry hunters, it is the rougher water months that are better for beach hunters looking for old shipwreck coins and artifacts. Of course the occasional summer storm is the exception, but generally the best months for hunting shipwreck items on the beach are at the beginning of each new year. You have a lot of rough water and the effect adds up. The beaches get pealed back as the you go from fall to winter and winter to spring. Then summer conditions start to settle in and that puts a damper on the beach hunting.
All of the renourishment sand has not helped us on the Treasure Coast, but a few beaches have lost a lot of that. The high tides and big surf of October was a big help. Some beaches, while refilling to some extent, are still cut down, and whatever short-term refilling has occurred has not been heavy so it will not take a lot of new erosion to open things up again.
Back a few weeks ago I said this could be a good winter season for metal detecting, and at this point I have not been disappointed. Given the current state of the beaches, I am optimistic about the coming winter months.
After many years of detecting, I managed to make two finds that are significant personal firsts this year.
The first time you find a particular type of item, it sticks out in your memory, whether it was your first gold ring, first Spanish reale, or whatever. I can think back decades and remember many of my personal firsts. Some came early in my metal detecting days, but many came after many years and even decades of metal detecting. After all that time, you'd think it wouldn't be easy to find things you haven't found before, but that isn't the case. Metal detecting is like that. And the Treasure Coast beaches are like that. There is huge variety of types of treasure. That is one of the things that makes it so much fun.
Ideally you want to be able to keep topping yourself. That can be a good motivator. You don't want to still be talking about a find you made ten or twenty years ago. As long as you keep detecting, you want to keep making better finds. In fact if your best find was made many years ago, that probably tells you there was a good bit of luck involved. If it is a matter of skill, you should keep learning and progressing, just like your level of knowledge.
Of course there might come a time when you have to slow down. We all do at some time. But when that time comes, you will still have all those memories. But as long as you are still able to go out there and hunt, keep looking ahead. If you continue to learn and keep improving, your best finds will still be in the future.
---
Joe D. was kind enough to send me a variety of pictures of Yankee Jumpers, or Jack Jumpers, as they were evidently called in some regions of New England.
The following photo gives you an idea of how they were used. You could make sharp cuts or turns like the one shown in the photo. They were very maneuverable, and as the name would imply, could be taken over jumps and survive a bone jarring landing.
___
Every day hundreds of people are still checking old posts in treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com. There are years of posts there.
Even though another cold front will be coming through, MagicSeaWeed is only showing the surf in the three foot area for the next week or so.
Happy hunting,