Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
The FUN convention in Tampa closes today, but Sedwick will be at the Vero Coin show January 20 and 21.
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The wind was blowing and the air icy cold. It was a once-in-a-decade type of thing for this part of Florida. It felt more like Moose, Wyoming, than Fort Pierce, Florida. I can't remember the year, but it was sometime in the 1980s. The Treasure Coast experienced an impact freeze in 1989 that ran from December 20 to December 26, but to both my wife and I, the event I am describing seems like it was years earlier. I was reminded of that time when I recently stepped onto a cold windy beach that was not nearly that cold but felt just as cold because I had become accustomed to the warm weather of Florida.
Back in the 80s, whenever it was, I was driving from the Fort Lauderdale area, where I lived at the time, to North Florida to visit my parents for Christmas. I'm pretty sure it was either Christmas eve or the day before that.
I brought along my detector, hoping to get in a little detecting on the Treasure Coast, so I stopped at John Brooks to see what it looked like. My wife decided to stay warm in the car. I walked onto the beach and saw the surf pounding and the sand blowing. I noticed a cut, maybe two feet high, running from just south of the beach access and north, well past the Christmas tree.
If you don't know, the Christmas tree was a landmark known to all Treasure Coast detectorists back then. It was about ten feet of dead tree that stuck up near the front of the beach close to the beginning of the bend north of the beach access. The Christmas tree was always decorated with rope, floats and any kind of beach junk that could be hung on the tree.
I forget which year the Christmas tree disappeared, but I'm sure it was gone after the storms of 2004.
Like I said, I was way more cold tolerant back then. I wore a sweater over a t-shirt, which is what i usually wore when ice skating on frozen lakes and driving gloves - not to mention pants. I'm not sure about shoes. I usually detected barefoot back then, but can't hardly imagine doing that in such cold weather now. I remember warming my feet by stepping in the water,which would be warmer than the air on cold days. The only trouble with that was when the wet feet were exposed to the cold wind again.
I didn't want to take long. My wife was waiting in the car, and I wanted to get to my parent's house before it as too late.
Shortly after beginning to detect, I found a reale. It wasn't long before I found another. I looked back towards the beach access and noticed another fellow that was all bundled up and getting ready to detect, but then I saw him shake his head, turn around and leave. He evidently thought it was just too cold, so I had the beach to myself again. In not much more than a half hour I had picked up about eight small Mexican reales - twos, ones and halves - all between the beach access and the Christmas tree. One unusually nice half reale had a full date and mint mark.
One of my most common mistakes has been not taking full advantage of the best opportunities. I wonder today what all I missed or what I could have found if I spent more time on the beach that day.
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This morning we're supposed to have a north wind, but not much of a surf. Tomorrow the surf will be a bit higher but the wind will be coming from the east. That isn't the ideal situation.
Joe D. says the recent weather didn't help the Jupiter area beaches. Here are a couple recent pictures from Joe.
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| Jupiter Beach Photo by Joe D. |
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| Jupiter Beach Photo by Joe D. |
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
