St. Martin

[Tenderfoot]

After 5 years beach hunting on our trips to St. Martin I still feel like a novice. Have found some great finds over the years. But in September it was hit with a category 5 hurricane and badly damaged. We’re headed there tomorrow for 6 weeks I’m bringing my trusted Excalibur II and also a CTX 3030 I recently acquired. I hope to begin to learn it there.
My question is has anyone detected after a hurricane? Since the beaches were all affected what should I look for? Also any advice on my beginnings with the 3030? Thanks for the help.

 

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[CASPER-2]

...You just never know - islands lot different than hitting Fla. coast after a storm
I hit a couple islands after big bad storms - they did not benefit me
My one and only trip to St.Martin yrs ago

 

[Tenderfoot]

Nice haul. This is from last year

 

[sonnar28]

I was recently in the Caribbean at an island struct by last year's cat 5 hurricanes, the area that I visited had had the dry sand washed down to hard pack with now barely 1/2 - 1 inch soft sand on top. The wet sand/shallows was all fairly light sand filled with tons of light junk, consistent with the area being scrubbed down several feet by the storm, then filled back in slowly in the recent past. It reminded me of a freshly replenished beach.

A large coil, or a PI was not effective; the Excal with 8 inch coil run hot would be a reasonable set up for these conditions, although the CTX with 6 inch/ 11 inch coil would be a close second if you are familiar with the tones or can set up the CTX to identify the trash. Clive Clynick's " A Practical Guide to Finding Gold, Silver and Coins with the Minelab CTX 3030" is a valuable resource.

I am sure conditions will vary from beach to beach, hopefully you can find some areas with better conditions than I encountered.

Good luck!

Charles

 

[Tenderfoot]

Will give it a try. Thanks Charles

 

[Tenderfoot]

After 3 trips to the beach with my Excalibur II I’ve come away with tons of coins, zero bottle caps, pull tabs or jewelry. The hurricane destroyed all of the beach bars and it looks like a bulldozer graded the beach. It seems like the coins may have stayed near the surface because they were flat. Not sure why else they’d still be here. The 1 1/2 mile beach which used to have hundreds of people every day is now occupied by at most a couple dozen. I’m told that all of the beaches on the island are the same.

 

[Tenderfoot]

 

[sonnar28]

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At least you have some heavy targets - there is hope!

Try using the reject feature of your CTX to knock out the coins (just use a couple of each denomination), this link reviews exactly how to do it ( https://www.minelab.com/usa/treasure-talk/beach-hunting-with-the-ctx-3030-part-3 ). Then hit the areas that had high concentrations of heavy targets and see if you can squeeze out some gold.

Also there may be pockets of very heavy targets that may include gold, maybe try multiple beaches that are oriented differently.

Another approach would be to take a small area populated with heavy targets and clean it completely out, using pinpoint on the Excal that you are most familiar with, as the gold may be hiding deep and relatively masked by surface targets.

Good luck!

Charles