My mate Darren arrived this afternoon with his ACE150, his camera and was keen for a hunt. The welcomed rain of the morning had dissipated and blue sky was slowly nudging out the clouds making for a hot muggy atmosphere. After taking pictures of the results of my last two adventures, I found I was still unable to upload them as Darren had forgotten the USB cord to download them!! Still they are being e-mailled to me tonight.
We set off at about 2.30pm and grabbed a nice coffee on the way then started our adventure at the southern end of Maraetai beach. It was new ground and it was heading for low tide opening up the beach. It was still very warm but strangely the beach was almost empty. We spotted a fellow detectorist working around the wharf and I wondered if he was picking up much that I had missed during my previous visits. Off we set, I trolled the wet and Darren stayed up in the dry. After an hour all we had was a single 20 cent to our names. Lot's of nails, tent pegs and other fugleys were in abundance though. So we headed towards the wharf again, the third time in 36 hours for me. The other guy had gone and I thought the area would be completely cleaned out now. But I was wrong, as once again it again proved much more fruitful than the rest of the beach had been. I immediately picked up a dollar coin and that was followed a bunch of twenty cents with a couple of 50 and 10 cents. Most coins were heavily encrusted signifying they had been laying around for a while even though I and others had done this area to death! The trash was negligible as I think I have removed most of it already this week.
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| Is the Maraetai wharf magnetic? |
My other finds included a nice silver fishing lure, a 'Grim Reaper', with a three pointed hook still attached, a lead sleeve for connecting electrical wires, another handy screw thingy from a boat and a disc that could be the base of a bullet of some kind or something quite completely different. It has the letters DEKS PAT APR printed on one side. (After googling those letters it seems the disc is from a plumbing and roofing supply company and is probably the head of a nail of some sort). Of course, tent pegs proliferated.
Darren's ACE150 ran out of battery power and we decided to head home at about 5pm. Once home, Darren took a few more pictures of today's haul to be sent on to me later before he hit the road home.
My accumulation of spending for the day was $2.90 all but 20 cents from the wharf area. Tomorrow I think I will hit a different beach or a few parks and give the wharf area a well earned rest. Maybe Gareth and Dave will arrive to go gold panning.
See you out there.
