Help - St. Augustine Beach, FL

[myrtle]

Heading down to Florida next week and planning on spending quite a bit of time detecting the beaches. I will have a car so I am not limited to just the St. Augustine beach. Any good advice on what beaches to hunt or any other info you may find helpful would be appreciated. I plan I giving my ACE 250 the workout of its life.

Thnx

myrtle

 

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[Diver_Down]

Ace 250 will keep you in the dry sand. If you don't mind cleaning out a lot of trash and want the chance at sand that isn't detected, then grid and scour the beach volleyball courts at the St. Johns county pier/park. There are 4 courts. The two nearest the pavilion are packed every Weds. with people enjoying the free concerts in the pavilion. The reason why no one detects the courts (at least the first 2) is because there will be a gajillion bottle caps and tabs. That being said, we have been having some very high tides as of late. The old driving lane this past summer was closer to the water by about 20 feet. The towel line would have been in front of that with parking being where the current driving lane. Contrary to popular opinion, the parking area is the most productive for dry sand hunters.

Also, if you want a real crap shoot of a hunt, but the chance at finding possible wreck finds, find Old A1A before Marineland in the south of St. Johns County. The Army Corp is conducting a beach renourishment. Their source material is the dredging of the intracoastal. There are theories that an old wreck was washed over the current beach/barrier island and was deposited in the waterway. The problem is that there is a generous coating of Can Slaw to go with the mud.

 

[gildeal]

Don't rule out a drive up to jacksonville beach for dry sand hunting, very popular beach, with lots of visitors!
Also so many old shipwrecks etc...in and around the st. augustine area, be sure and pick up a few books about
the history of the area for some very interesting "downtime"/ research!
good luck out there!

 

[LM]

Diver_Down gave good advice. Really, barring some weird 'lightning strikes' sort of historic find that washes up at random, St. Aug beaches aren't that great for 'lost stuff'. They don't get as densely populated as more popular spots, there's been all sorts of renourishment done that has effected things. I beat the hell out of the old towel line on the north end of the island, and there was some light potential relative to the barren wasteland that was the rest of that beach- but it's about 3 1/2 miles up on foot (since they banned driving. Hugely popular back in the day) and it wasn't like it was some bonanza. I think I wound up with enough crusty clad to stuff into the coke machine when I passed by the state park picnic area and buy a drink.

IF you want a REAL wildcard hunt (next time you're down- I realize this post is a couple months old), some of the beach areas in Vilano/PV along A1A aren't hit very often. There's an access in the most random and remote spot up there I've been meaning to hit.

 

[AdamBuchanan]

Yes ,, Vilano is a good area.. its right there in St Aug... lots of surfers in the area,, lots of small walk in beach access points.. Good luck !

 

[Diver_Down]

Also, if you want a real crap shoot of a hunt, but the chance at finding possible wreck finds, find Old A1A before Marineland in the south of St. Johns County. The Army Corp is conducting a beach renourishment. Their source material is the dredging of the intracoastal. There are theories that an old wreck was washed over the current beach/barrier island and was deposited in the waterway. The problem is that there is a generous coating of Can Slaw to go with the mud.

Since others have brought up this old topic, I would like to invite others to scour the area above. The renourishment has been completed, and thanks to Mother Nature, it has been removed. Yes. The beach is back to it's old grade. The problem remains is that there is a ton of Can Slaw, and I could use some help removing it.