Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
A couple days ago, I talked a lot about tides and tide charts. Today I'll give an example of using those charts for a specific purpose.
You might want to hunt at or near low tide. If don't have a specific beach targeted for the day, you might want to check a few beaches and you can use the tide charts to decide which beach or beaches to check first.
Visiting the beach with the first low tide will give you time to visit and detect a second beach, if you decide to move on from the first beach.
For my example I picked three charts from Tideschartcom. The are a couple days old, but I'll use them to illustrate my point.
The afternoon low tide at Vero Pier is shown as occurring at 2.42 PM. The low tide at Fort Pierce South is supposed to be at 4:06 PM, and at Walton Rocks, 6:13 PM.
Suppose you are thinking about metal detecting Vero, Fort Pierce or Walton Rocks. The Vero low tide is well before the other two, so you might want to check there first. You'd have plenty of time to check Fort Pierce before Walton Rocks too.
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Here is the windy.com table for the St. Lucie area. The surf is decreasing, as expected. The winds are also now from the east instead of the northeast.
I'm gaining experience and confidence with windy.com. I'll come up with a better way of displaying predictions.
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As you can see on the following beach cam, the surf is coming from the east.
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I added tideschart.com to my reference link list.
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Watch for drugs washing up. There has been a lot found lately. Cocaine has washed up in the Jupiter area a couple days. And a brick of fentanyl was found in Fort Pierce.
I meant to get out this morning but didn't. Maybe later today.
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Tideschart.com also shows the tides for various points on the intercoastal waterway. Check it out.
The wind is very important for tide changes on the intercoastal. If the wind is blowing from the east, the water will pile up on the east side even if it isn't low tide.
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Of my coin finds from yesterday, less than 10% were pennies. Most were quarters and dimes, almost evenly split. I found more nickels than pennies. That is an unusual distribution.
You might wonder why the unusual distribution of coins. First consider that the coins were found below and not far away from a fresh cut. When coins are washing out of a cut, pennies will tend to be washed farther down the slope, with quarters on average staying closer to the cut.
When coins are washing up onto the beach, it tends to be the opposite. Pennies are, on average, higher up the slope and quarters lower.
That is one way you can get an idea about whether coins are being washed out or in.
Yesterday, I was not there near low tide. I could only detect close to the cut. I would guess that many of the pennies were farther down the slope.
I've talked a lot about the movement of iten a beach in the past. There are other ways that items can move.
See The Treasure Beaches Report Direct From Florida's Treasure Coast.: 3/10/14 Report - Experiments On The Movement Of Sand And Other Objects On A Beach, for example.
Coins vary in size but are pretty much the same shape. Items of different shapes, such as sinkers and jewelry, will behave differently.
Good hunting,
TreasureGuide @comcast.net