Ok, I'm back! Still alive, still no treasure (at least in terms of gold and silver).
Sorry for the delay. We set sail as planned, was a little rough, but just as I expected, once we reached the barrier island we were sheltered from the wind, thus also the breakers (waves). We started working around the wooden barrel. Found some old broken bottles, some kind of hook, a sharpenning stone, some wooden wreckage, and a couple of bones. One looked like a piece of human rib (it was quite black and the marrow was almost mineralized) while the other, though also old, didn't look quite as old and may or may not have been human. I turned that one in to the police, just in case. The policeman said "I'm not sure if it's human or animal yet, but whatever it is, it's been dead for quite a long time. I don't think we need to worry too much about it" and threw it in the trash! Whatever! Once the tide gave way we spent some time around the ballast. I was getting lots of hits with my md, but it was all junk (by junk, I mean more recent trash either thrown overboard by nasty nowadays humans, or washed-up fishing equipment like lobster traps). Then the sky started turning scarry, so we head back before the storm hit. We moored just in time, too! I have all the stuff soaking in a water solution to treat it (especially the wood) for later use. I didn't get the camera develloped yet, but as soon as I do I'll post the pics for you guys. If the weather cooperates, I'll try to make another run there next week. As for getting that barrel out of there, ain't gonna happen! I'm gonna either need a VERY low tide or a gap-vac to suck the sand out from in and around it. That sucker must be 4 feet high, with 3 feet stuck in the sand! I only managed to dig no deeper then 2 feet, as the waves kept re-filling my work, despite having built a make-shift levy to block the waves (rogues) once the tide got low enough.
