11/27/15 Report - Beach Detecting Conditions Rating Increased To Level 2. Coin Clusters Being Found On T. C. Beaches.

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

Full Moon Last Night.

A couple days ago someone said they found clusters of clad coins, a good number of which were on the surface.  They wondered if anyone else was seeing the same thing.

In answer to the reader's question, I saw the same thing Wednesday and Thursday on two different beaches.  One was what I would call a coin line and the other was a coin hole.  It is evidently not uncommon to find shallow coin clusters on the Treasure Coast right now.  If you've been reading this blog very long, you know what I mean by the terms "coin line" and "coin hole."

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There was a nice full moon last night and a good bit of wind.  I went out this morning just after high tide and found that some beaches were slightly better while others looked worse.

The water was high.  At one beach the water was a good ten yards or more behind the berm.

I didn't find the clad coins at the beach where I found them on the slope yesterday.  Conditions at that beach were a little worse.

Six Foot Cliff At One Treasure Coast Beach Today.

As you might expect, there were a lot of detectorists out today.  Some were locals and some were from up north.

I am upgrading my beach detecting conditions rating to a 2.  That is a borderline rating.  It indicates that the beach has improved but is not consistently productive.  I know some shipwreck cobs were found today.  I only know of one beach that is producing cobs for sure.  Although conditions are way better than they were this summer, you will still have to hit the right beaches and even then the cobs will be few and far between.

In the recent past I have been pretty conservative with my ratings, especially the level two rating.  I decided that I should probably be a little more liberal with that rating in the future.  It is a borderline or transition rating.

According to the surfing web sites, the surf is supposed to peak at around 10 feet on the Treasure Coast this evening.

Even though the surf will be decreasing Saturday and Sunday, it looks to me like the wind will be more favorable later Saturday and into Sunday.

The beaches are wobbling.  By that I mean one day they will be a little better and the next a little worse.  We're not getting the consistent improvement that I'd like to see.

Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

I enjoyed a couple of the shows about the Pilgrims at Plymouth.  One movie had an excellent replica of the Mayflower in it.  I saw some artifacts on it that I couldn't identify.

It looks like there should be a couple more days of at least level two conditions.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/8/15 Report - Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Conditions Upgrade. Cut Scallops All Along Treasure Coast Beaches. Signal Finds.

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

I have a lot to report today but will hold much of it for some later time.  Today I'll get to the most important and timely information.

I took a look at a number of beaches this morning just after high tide.  All of the beaches that I looked at looked very similar.  There were similar scallops and cuts from South Hutchinson Island to Wabasso.

Douglass Beach This Morning After High Tide.

Seagrape Trail Looking South.

Seagrape Trail Looking North.

 Notice the detectorist between the two sets of stairs.

Wabasso Beach Looking Towards Disney

It isn't very often that the beaches look so similar from Fort Pierce to Wabasso.

The sand in front of the cuts was mushy.  Cuts were about three foot high at the highest.

The water didn't get very far back on the beach.  That was disappointing.

The waves were highest at the Fort Pierce buoy around 5 AM this morning, decreased after that, and then have been increasing again.

This NOAA web site shows the data coming from the Fort Pierce and Sebastian buoys.  Take a look.  You can get a lot of information from this web site.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41114


My increase in beach detecting conditions rating is only up from a 1 to a 2.  I only expect a very very few scattered cobs to be found.

The Turtle Trail access was closed.

North of Seagrape Trail there was a lot of very small iron pieces just below the cuts.   Pulse machines will be detecting barely visible pieces of iron.

I've talked about "signal" finds before.  I found some of those today too.  See photo below.

Lead Bullet "Signal" Finds

These small caliber lead bullets appear to have been shot into sand.  Sorry - not the best photo.

I've found many of these at Turtle Trail when the back dunes were eroding and found them in areas and at times when cobs were found on the beach.  I take them as one indicator that detecting conditions are improving.

I know for sure that many of these come from the dunes.  I've tracked them.

The surfing web site is predicting a higher surf through tonight and then decreasing slightly through tomorrow.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

12/9/14 Report- Big Waves Little Erosion This Morning. Beach Detecting Conditions Upgrade.

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



Big Waves This Morning.

The water got far back on the beaches this morning.  The water was almost as high as during Sandy.  At John Brooks there was a shell line back just in front of the dunes.  I got excited when I saw the waves and how far he water got back on the beach, but there was no erosion.  It was pushing the sand up and back.

The video below shows what it looked like at Seagrape Trail.  The water was hitting the face of the cliff and causing it to erode, but that was all renourishment sand. And the sand that was falling off of the face of the cliff was staying in front of the cliff instead of being washed away.

It was very mushy in some places.  I sunk in the sand up to my knees a couple of times.   Mostly the sand was piling up.  There will be a few places where you'll find some cuts, but you'll have to hunt those few places out.

Most of he beaches from Vero north still had a good bit of renourishment sand.  I didn't notice any places were the old sand was being exposed.



Wabasso This Morning.

You can see the renourishment sand in front of the dunes here.  That is the problem with most of the Vero/Sebastian area.

Golden Sands park was closed.  A renourishment project was taking place there.  Treasure Shores is now open.



Amber Sands Looking North.

At some places it looked very much like it did after Sandy. 

Notice that in the picture above there is no erosion, just a slope, and there is still renourishment sand protecting the dunes.

I'm upgrading to a level two Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Rating, but that is all for now.

I suspect that a few shipwreck items will be found.  There might be a few things washed up.  The front beach is getting pounded.  It will be hard to get out on the front beach until the waves calm down. 

There might be a few cobs that appear on the flat beach, as they did after Sandy.



I'd like to hear from anyone who attended the Robert Marx seminar who can fill us in on any pertinent details or conclusions.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net

3/13/14 Post - Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Conditions Rating Increased One Notch.

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

I warned this morning that there was a nice stiff wind coming from the North, and it might be worth taking a look to see what was happening to the beach.  The river is not a great predictor of what is happening at the beach, but it does give some information.

Well, based upon the wind and what I saw on the river, I went to the beach, and here are a couple of photos showing what I saw.

This Morning Just Before Low Tide.

This cut around two feet high or less.

Looking the other direction at the same beach, the cut was slightly bigger, for a good distance being about three feet high.

The surf, as you can see on the third picture wasn't that big.  I would guess that it was in the three or four foot range.  That certainly isn't a lot and it isn't the kind of wave size that people usually expect to create much in the way of cuts.

The erosion was very much to the East, on the very front of the beach.  That is the result of the small tides and three to four foot surf.

The cuts from some time back were maybe nearly thirty or more yards farther back on the beach.  You could still see some remains of some of those previous cuts.

This cut ran more or less continuously for probably two miles.

The beach in front of the cut, what there was of it, was relatively compact.   There were some small metal targets.  I'll show one or more after I get them tested.

At another beach a few miles farther south, there were no cuts, so don't expect every beach to have cuts, but some will.  You'll have to check around.

Two To Three Foot Cut Before Low Tide.

The wind was still brisk, and as happens when you get a North wind, the water was slicing away at the front of the beach, and that is why there were cuts.

Some people talk as though it is all about big waves, but the angle is just as important as wave size.

There also seemed to be a dip in front of the cuts in the shallow water.  That is another factor.  The sand bars were out a good piece.

Notice the curve to the beach in the above photo.  That is another important factor that contributes to the slicing angle of the waves here.

Waves Breaking On Front of Beach In Front of Cuts.

I might be slightly generous in my rating here, but I'm going to upgrade my beach detecting conditions scale to a 2.  Maybe it should be more like a 1.5.  Nonetheless I think it is the most improvement in conditions that I've seen for a while.

 
Conditions have been so consistently poor lately that I have been seldom giving a numeric beach conditions rating.  I therefore need to explain my rating scale for those who haven't been reading this blog for a long time.

The rating scale is a five point scale, with one indicating poor beach detecting conditions and 5 indicating excellent beach detecting conditions.

The conditions we had back in November when a good number of cobs were found rated as high as a 3, or maybe even a 4 for a short time, on my rating scale.  I think I was a little conservative on that one.  Anyhow, that gives you some sense of what the ratings mean without getting too complicated.

I'm glad to see some cuts for a change anyway.  2014 had been pretty slow.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

Prepost posted earlier today.

This is not my post for the day.  The wind picked up and was coming from the North so I wanted to let you know.

This isn't my post for the day, and this isn't the ocean.  It is the river.  You can see a good number of white caps.  I haven't seen the ocean yet today.  So later I'll have my actual post for you.

The surf is only supposed to be about four feet so I'm not expecting much, but I do want to check it out later.

11/5/13 Report - More Rough Surf and Another Upgrade in Beach Detecting Conditions.

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


Yesterday I upgraded the rating on my 5-point Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Scale from a 1 to a 2 and said there will be some cobs found.  I was early making the prediction, and I was correct.  There were some cobs found.  Here is one example of a light-weight Philip half reale.

Half Reale Cob Found on the Treasure Coast Yesterday.

It is a small reale and could have easily been missed.  In weighs only .5 grams.

The surf along the Treasure Coast got higher today than it was yesterday.  There was some additional erosion today, but not a great deal.  For one thing, the waves are hitting pretty much from the east instead of the north.

Nonetheless, there was additional erosion today and some improvement in beach detecting conditions.

The beaches that produce cobs do not necessarily produce much other additional signals or targets.  I've seen both kinds of beaches the past two days.  One with not much but a cob or two, and another beach not far away with modern coins.  The beach with a lot of modern coins had coins from the foot of the cut down to the water.

Surf After High Tide Today.

As you can see from this photo, the surf was rough - certainly rough enough to stir some things up even though the sand bar is absorbing a lot of the force.

Like yesterday, the water wasn't getting too far back and the cuts were generally towards the front of the beach.

Today (Tues.) we had a 5 - 8 foot surf.  That will decrease a touch, but not much tomorrow if the predictions are correct.

Different beaches are definitely looking different and differ in how good they are right now.

Long Three to Four Foot Cut on South Hutchinson Island Today.

It looked like South Hutchinson Island eroded a little more than the Indian River County beaches, but both areas had their cuts.

Today through Saturday the surf is supposed to remain pretty high.  That will give you a chance to pick and choose your times and spots.  In the past couple of years when we did get a higher surf it was often for just a day or two.  If we can get a continued north to south long shore current that should really help move us into winter beach conditions.

John Brooks Beach Erosion.

One thing I highly recommend is to test your detector settings at the beach using a target similar to what you want to find.  The closer the test target is to what you want to find, the better it will be.

If for example, you want to find a silver reale, take one (preferably a small one) to the beach and put it on the sand where you want to hunt, and test your settings.  Sweep repeatedly over the test target and change the settings until you have the best signal.

This isn't a bad idea any time to you detect on the beach.  Start by adjusting your settings and sweep speed with a test target before detecting.  Small reales like the one shown above can be easily missed if your settings and sweep speed are not good.

If you don't have a reale and that is what you want to find, what I've recommended before is to get a silver dime and cut it in fourths, and then adjust your detector settings using the quarter dime as the test target.  It will be close.  Be sure to vary your sweep speed and observe how that affects the signal.

We still have several days of good rough surf predicted, so that will give you a chance to give it a go.

I think it is Saturday that the surf is supposed to be up to 7 feet again.

I'll upgrade my Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Rating to a 3 for now.  In case you are new to the blog, the scale is a five-point scale, with 1 indicating poor conditions and 5 excellent.

The beach will change day by day.  Some spots will get better and others worse.

That is about it for today, but here is an article you might enjoy.  An old settlement site was discovered during a construction project in Iowa.

Here is the link.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20131101/NEWS/131101029/UI-School-Music-excavation-unearths-historic-treasures?nclick_check=1


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/27/12 Report - Beach Conditions Upgrade on Treasure Coast



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

NOTE: Additional material added to end of post this evening.


Eroded Treasure Coast Beach Monday Morning



Yesterday, none of the beaches on the Treasure Coast looked good.  In addition to the beaches I looked at and posted, Bernie C. sent in a report from some of the beaches that I didn't visit and his report verified what I said.  As of yesterday morning, beach detecting conditions around the Treasure Coast remained poor.



Between yesterday and this morning, the wind shifted, and some of the beaches got cut.  Here is one that I spent some time on this morning.  A five to six foot cut ran for hundreds of yards.

I visited another beach that had deteriorated even more from the poor conditions yesterday.

One beach will cut while another will build.  It has to do with a lot of factors, including the angle of the beach and how the waves hit it.

I'm upgrading my Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions from a 1 to a 2.   (The scale is a five point scale with 1 indicating poor and 5 excellent conditions.) 

That is the first beach conditions upgrade that I've issued for quite a while.  While that one beach looked good it is not as good as it looks.  And not all of the beaches improved, as I said. 

Beach Without Erosion Monday Morning

I would bet that the beaches with rocks or other obstacles to the flow of sand, probably eroded on the north side of the obstacles.

On the beach that I saw that was very eroded, the sand got pulled out to the shallow water, extending the beach.  A lot of shells were on the front of the beach.  



I don't have time for any more right now but wanted to get the upgrade in.  Hopefully, I'll have a chance to post more later today.

I have more to post, but don't have the time right now.


Added near 8 PM.

The wind is now from the southeast and the waves at many beaches are hitting from a southeast direction.  While northeast winds are much more effective in puttng cobs on the beach, southeast winds can cause erosion.  And erosion will lead to increased finds.

I know of a few gold rings that have been found in the last few days, including one this morning on one of the main 1715 Fleet beaches.  While people don't hunt modern jewelry much on the shipwreck beaches, some of them do produce a good bit, especially those beaches like the beach at Jupiter Inlet, which has had a lot of beach traffic over the years.

Not long ago I talked about older modern items, and how theyy can indicate that you are possibly getting closer to the even older finds.

The seas will be decreasing through the night, and will be down to two or three feet tomorrow.   Continued south/southeast winds won't put many cobs on the beach, although a small number have undoubtedly been found in the past few days.  I am expecting some artifacts to be found on the beaches the next couple of days.

If you are a shell or fossil hunter, there were a lot of shells and a few fossils mixed in with the shells on at least one Treasure Coast beach today.

I didn't find any coin lines or holes today, just scattered items, with very light pieces of aluminum and gold being found in close proximity. 

Expect southerly winds and nearly flat seas Tuesday and Wednesday.   

The West Coast should provide some very interesting hunting after Isaac passes by.



Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

10/6 Report - Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Upgrade

Wabasso Beach This Morning.


I don't have much time but wanted to get the report in this morning. I suppose I'll make my a number of typos.


The big news today is the upgrade in beach conditions. About half of the treasure beaches are cutting. I am issuing a treasure beach upgrade to a level 2. If it wasn't for the amount of dredged sand on the northern end of the Treasure Coast, I would probably raise the beach conditions rating to a 3.


As you can see Wabasso Beach has lost a lot of sand and looks great. If it wasn't for the dredged sand, I would give this beach a 4 rating. But as you know, conditions there are improving, but it is not as good as it looks when you take into account the dredged sand


Underlying Layer of Brown Sand at Wabasso.


This photo shows a layer of brown sand under the dredged sand at Wabasso. That is good news. the beach is starting to get eroded down to the old sand.


Not all of the beaches are eroding as much. Rio Mar is not cut and neither is Amber Sands, for example.


I heard that the beach north of Sebastian Inlet is eroding, but I didn't see it myself.


Seagrape Trail This Morning Looking South.

Seagrape and Turtle Trail both were cut but nothing like Wabasso. Those two beaches had some large scallops along with smaller cuts. It wasn't bad, but again, the problem was all of the dredged sand.

I know of one shipwreck coin that came from an Indian River County Beach yesterday.

Overall, as I said, I'll issue a Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Scale rating of 2 with the possibility of an upgrade to 3 in the next day or two.

I haven't given my numeric ratings much lately and so I'll remind you that I use a five point scale going from 1 to 5, with 1 being poor and 5 excellent. My rating is based upon the probability of finding a shipwreck cob or coin.

My rating scale starts with a 1 instead of a zero because there is always some possibility even when the probability is very low.

If you want more explanation of my rating system, use the search box on this blog and enter Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Scale. I know that is a lot, but it is relatively precise.

It is so nice to see the boring summer beach start to leave, and it will be nice to see more of the natural sand up in Indian River and Brevard Counties when the dredged sand gets removed again. I don't know why they think it will stay to begin with.

If you do find a nice cob or shipwreck coin here is a nice web site that might help you identify the coin. It explores the evolution of the royal shields that you will find on many coins. If you don't find the information elsewhere on the coin, you might be able to identify the reign, or at least narrow it down, by studying the shield.

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?tt=url&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.maravedis.net&lp=es_en


Silver is really increasing nicely in value lately.


Forecast.

I've already talked about the current conditions so I'll just do the forecast here.

The seas will remain at about current levels through the day. High tides are still good and high, and the wind is coming out of the northeast. As I hoped, this did result in some erosion on the Treasure Coast, and it might increase a little more at the next high tide or two.

I don't think conditions will improve much more than that though, as the seas are expected to begin to decrease tomorrow. Later in the week, you'll have a chance to explore the low tide areas to see if anything got left behind where the rough water was.

I saw a lot of people hunting today. Conditions are as good as I've seen on the Treasure Coast almost all summer.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net