Cornwallis, not a good day.

A day to forget though valuable lessons were learnt. I am writing this up to remind me of certain procedures that I will now definitely carry out in the future and take a little time checking and cross checking equipment before haring out to get amongst it all.

After some research on Cornwallis I decided that here was a place that showed activity from very early days when on Thursday 29th October 1841, after 301 days at sea, the longest ever sailing of a passenger ship between Great Britain & New Zealand, a group of 27 Scottish settlers from Glasgow arrived on the ship 'Brilliant'.
Since then housing, a saw mill and several other small operations have come and gone and it looks like a place that could be full of relics and old coins.


Cornwallis Wharf

 The day started out great, weather not to foul early on and low tide was a midday giving us a chance to follow the tide out. Gareth and I arrived an hour before low tide and spirits were high. It was also Gareth's 52 birthday and he was hoping to find  something nice as a celebration.
Things started badly for me. My Cobra Beach Magnet indicated low batteries straight away which was frustrating. More frustration followed as I realised I only had four spare AA's (left my other spares at home duh!) when my machine takes eight of them. I tried it with the four new batteries and four of the existing ones but it was no good. Meanwhile Gareth was having trouble with the iron sand which he found hard to ground balance against. He did a 15 minute sweep but his readings were all over the place. Gareth uses a Garrett AT Pro and it is a good machine but he is still getting learning how to get it working at it's optimum. There are is a lot of information delivered via the screen but it takes a while and some experience to interpret it all.
So after frustratingly watching Gareth struggle we decided to go buy some more batteries for me from the local shop. I managed to get the last four they had and while Gareth supped his coffee I was frantically changing to my new power suppliers.
We then decided to drive along the peninsular and check out the grass verges and shade spots rather than battle the iron impregnated sand.
By now the tide had turned and the weather was closing in with a very strong wind which made it rather uncomfortable. These bays are really open to the elements and we could see rain heading our way too.
My detector still was indicating low power and I feared the worse that I had a malfunction of some type, maybe a short? So with me out of action I became Gareth's digging pal. He found the signals and I dug them up.


Little Huia northern end

 We ended up at the end of Little Huia bay by the Whatipu road turning. The ground was very trashy and all manner of rubbish seemed to be buried there. I remembered from my Telecom days that there was a phone box situated not far away, now long gone (since 1990) and I manged to locate the concrete pad it sat on. We had almost instant success with a 50 cent piece not far from the pad and things looked better. But after another several trash finds and with the weather now quite horrid we decided to put this one down to experience. We stopped for a five minute search at the local playground and Gareth uncovered a crusty old coin which we have yet to determine it's origin.
The wind was oppressive and with small showers dampening our enthusiasm we headed home.

So points to remember from me are, always make sure to carry extra batteries and after three trips to the West Coast beaches (two unwritten Muruwai excursions) I have learnt that although there will probably be loads of interesting targets to find it is pointless unless one can confidently eliminate the iron sand. So I will stick to the East Coast beaches and parks in the near future until I have a detector that can be balanced on iron sand. Gareths AT Pro does have that ability and he has vowed to become conversant in this facility.
So a waste of time finds wise but a big lesson taught and hopefully learnt.

I got home and tested my batteries I had in my machine and found out the reason for my problems. Somehow, in my haste, I had mixed up my new and old ones when swapping them. I felt a bit of a fool when I told Gareth and he gave me some well deserved stick. But on the bright side my machine is not broken and sits there looking at me for an Waitangi Day adventure. Yet to decide whether to go out but one thing is for sure it won't be to a West Coast Beach.
See you out there.