12/17/11 - Some First Observations on the Garrett Sea Hunter Mark II & ROV For Sale

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Deep Water ROV For Sale

Have you ever watched the guys from Odyssey Marine on TV and wishing you had an ROV.  Well this one is on sale on eBay, with a starting bid of $6500.   Just in time for Christmas too.   Wouldn't it be fun?  Too bad it won't be showing up under my tree.

Bernie C., who started the St. Lucie metal detecting club, got a chance to try out his new detector.  I asked him if he would send me his observations on the new detector after he had used it.   He did just that after using the new detector yesterday.

Here is what he had to say.

Here's a quick review of the Garrett Sea Hunter Mark II. I hit the beach with the Sea Hunter at 7 am today didn't find anything valuable just some clad. I was digging coins at 12 + inches in wet sand with no falsing. I dug with zero discrimination just to test the machine and to see how the different signals sounded, I dug part of a fishing hook at close to 20 inches. The headphones are extremely loud with no volume control and this is great if you are detecting in the surf. The machine is built very well, Heavy Duty. There is a little instability when swinging the coil due to the way the rods connect together but it can be fixed easy, and it doesn't affect the machines operation. I also did some air tests on gold and silver, here are the results: 10kt- 11.5 inches from coil. 14kt 13 inches from coil, 18kt 13.5 inches from coil and silver 12 inches from coil. I did notice I was digging alot more targets with the Sea Hunter than I was with my White"s IDX Pro machine. So it looks like the White's will be the inland unit due to the salt water falsing and the Garrett will be for the beach. I'll be doing some discrimination tests tomorrow.

Thanks Bernie!  Those are two detectors that I have not used.
As you might remember, Hurricane Irene was a disappointment on the Treasure Coast, but she did uncover some things up north.  In New York, for example, Irene uncovered part of an 18th Century fort.

Here is a nice article about that.

http://www.fox23news.com/content/irene/story/Flood-waters-unearth-18th-century-fort/yYJAl-fdI0u69T50S3NqEw.cspx

If you are around a historic area, always check out any eroded areas.  Even little gullies created by rain run-off can uncover old items.

Treasure Coast Beach Forecast and Conditions.

The wind is from the East, and the seas are down around five feet now.  That isn't enough to improve conditions for finding cobs but it is enough to keep stirring up the front beach.  I would expect some new secondary targets on the beach fronts - mostly iron and other lighter materials.

The seas will be decreasing over the next few days and down around one or two feet near Christmas.  That will make it easy to get out in the low tide zone, further than maybe than has been convenient the past couple of weeks.

I sure wish I had my camera with me one day about a week ago.  I saw some things uncovered at one spot that I haven't seen for years and probably won't for again for another couple of years.  It was one of those things where an isolated area just happened to get hit just right while most of the surrounding areas had no erosion at all.  That kid of thing happens occasionally .