Bering Sea Gold season 3 - 12/13/13

[Ordell]

Ok, ep 1 is over.

* Emily has her own ship, Eroica. I thought it was supposed to be Eurotica. She took The Edge from Zeke in a deal they made but it needed a ton of work. An engine blew up and that set off more Emily drama.

* Her idiot dad has a skiff appropriately named Minnow. I guess that makes him Gilligan.

* Meisterheim is working for a Christine Rose clone, a ship with a backhoe, called Au Grabber. He's not the captain, he works for someone else for once. I can't remember the guy's name, except it was a very ethnic German name.

* Zeke made a late appearance and sounds like he's losing his mind. He said during the winter he didn't shower or change his clothes for 3 months. In addition to Bunce's death, another friend of his committed suicide. I think this kid is in trouble.

* There was another guy who built the underwater sluice, but he lost it. He claims it floated off on an iceberg. I wouldn't be surprised if it was stolen.

 

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[Goodyguy]

Emily stole Vernon's crew
Enjoyed the staged race of the barges........ not really

Emily's dad seemed normal last night. (meds must have kicked in)
Zeke's girl friend must see a different Zeke than what we see on tv. I think she could do way better.

I suppose I'm caught up in the non reality of the reality.
Saw where Ice cold gold starts this thursday on Animal Planet.

Been following the mystery of Oak Island on History channel on Sundays and am a big fan.
Saw where another gem show is coming out called "Game of Stones"

Guess I'll become a couch potato...... Not

GG~

 

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[kazcoro]

Edited it to?

Yeah, like I said, not hard to do.

 

[russau]

Ive been biteing my tough holding this back for sometime,but has anyone looked at the air compressor setup that emily and steve are useing?? if you have a chance, look at the tanks they are useing on this compressor(they look like a walmart special).if im not mistaken these are steel tanks. steel tanks shouldnt be used on breathing air tanks because the rust up on the inside and sooner or latter these idiots will be breathing rust and health problems will come tumbelling down on them for the rest of their lives!and i wonder how many of these divers/"captains" sanitize their breathing equipment? if they cant remember to fill the fuel tanks, how in the world would they remember to sanitize the breathing equipment!atleast its a oiless compressor.

 

[fowledup]

Need our Ak dredgers to clarify this...If you notice the shots of the Christine Rose on "the lease", you also see the AuGrabber and several other operations. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the Pomrenkes win that lease at auction on one of the shows a season or two ago? If that be true then they're getting a healthy cut of the Grabber and the other ops on the lease. Until that dawned on me I thought it was kinda weird the ops similarities and the tongue and cheek comments about them digging on their spots. I've been in Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishing, it gets real ugly when you jump someone's spot or what's called "corking off". Your gonna see fists, lead, vessels banging or all the above and that's out at sea. When you get back in the harbor you can expect round two, go the bar round three. Ain't no joke, keeps folks minding their P and Q' s.

 

[Goodyguy]

I remember the bidding episode and have since heard that a lot of the winners such as the lady that was snapping up all the leases did not follow up and actually pay for the leases she and others had won that day and those leases went back to the blm.

Also if I remember correctly the lease that the Pomrenkes won was supposedly in deeper water and not that close to shore.
But with the non reality of the reality who knows what is really going on

GG~

 

[jeff of pa]

Emily stole Vernon's crew
Enjoyed the staged race of the barges........ not really

Emily's dad seemed normal last night. (meds must have kicked in)
Zeke's girl friend must see a different Zeke than what we see on tv. I think she could do way better.

I suppose I'm caught up in the non reality of the reality.
Saw where Ice cold gold starts this thursday on Animal Planet.

Been following the mystery of Oak Island on History channel on Sundays and am a big fan.
Saw where another gem show is coming out called "Game of Stones"

Guess I'll become a couch potato...... Not

GG~

Yes I sort of think the race was staged also .
at least I hope it was.
if Not , I'm glad the AU Grabber had problems.

They keep saying open waters but the crew who dove on a marked spot,
then had the guts to want to start a fight turned me off too.

Too much possible fake drama.

or at least I hope fake.

For the most part last nights episode was so boring to me,
I could have slept through it. & what wasn't boring was Embarrasing

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

Need our Ak dredgers to clarify this...If you notice the shots of the Christine Rose on "the lease", you also see the AuGrabber and several other operations. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the Pomrenkes win that lease at auction on one of the shows a season or two ago?

See Map: http://dnr.alaska.gov/mlw/mining/nome/Nome_Offshore_Overview.pdf

Shawn won lease #38, he had his 8" dredge working there, but there really has not been much activity on it, nor many of the other leases that were won. Most of those leases were not of much value, at least not for suction operations. A few might have value for diggers, but doubtful.

To value a lease I considered whether I could mine enough gold off it over three or four years to cover 5 times the purchase price (basically paying myself 20% of gross to recover the cost of the lease). Most bidders had no idea how crappy the leases were, for many of these leases the Rec area has better gold.

Most leases had already been picked over by the previous lease holder, or the one before that. Almost all this ground has been under lease since the 60's. Shawn and all those others operate on ADL 17867 West Tract; before the 2011 lease sale the owner of the two 17867 tracts owned all the leases from the jetty to the Cripple (there were only 2 or 3 very large leases). The State took back all but 2000 acres, but let him pick which two 1000 acre blocks to keep. He smartly picked the best two areas for his new leases.

Before 2011 there were 4 to 7 10" dredges owned by the owners of those leases as well as about 10 6" dredges under contract, and they mined off all the easy gold from everywhere on the the West side, including the area that was made into the 6" Rec area. He knew exactly which areas to keep, and he was laughing at people at the lease sale, telling them how worthless their new ground was.

 

[fowledup]

I remember him paying a kings ransom for the lease he won.

How deep are you all typically dredging? Are you hitting any type of bedrock? I have yet to see a hole deeper then a foot or two on the show is that the norm?

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

How deep are you all typically dredging? Are you hitting any type of bedrock?

There is a thick compacted mud layer, also known as a "clay pan" or "false bedrock" throughout most of the area offshore Nome. This is typically within a couple feet of the surface (or from the bottom of the sand layer, if there is one). Punching through this layer is almost never worth it, even with an excavator. There are thicker areas, and places with no bottom, some are good, some are barren.

There was an extensive study done in the 80's that showed that on average 27% of the gold to bedrock is on this layer. Bedrock is about 80' down. There are wide variances with those figures.

Even at 65' water depth, where I mine, it's the same story as shallower.

 

[Citiboy289]

Love this thread I never have to watch the show get all the info here

 

[fowledup]

That's interesting, I'm trying to get a better picture of the golds path and time frame I guess you'd say. The gold is coming from onshore correct? I assume the gold travels exceptionally slow compared to what we see down here. With the wave action both pushing and pulling and not really being violent enough to really move it. Is the wave action and storms strong enough to pull the majority of the gold out to sea or does it settle out quickly and start working its way down first? I was down south from you guys and off our beaches the slope was very slight and went out for a long ways before acquiring any depth. We also had huge tides that frequently exposed up to a half mile of mud flats. I don't remember it being quite so extreme in Nome. Are folks starting to work their way south towards the Kuskokwim or Bethel areas?

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

I'm trying to get a better picture of the golds path and time frame I guess you'd say.

I don't think the gold moves very far, at least not the large gold (larger than 50 mesh). There are no violent tides. There are violent storms that can winnow material, and ice plowing that can push and stack it. Mostly "new" gold is found when deep sand moves off good gold bearing material that was passed over for easier ground.

The gold offshore Nome was mostly placed in the second to last ice age, material in a glacial thrust was washed and worked by the ocean and other forces until the fine particles of dirt formed a mud layer, the larger material that remained above that layer concentrated and flattened; the material below that layer remained static and did not further concentrate.

There are deeper areas, below the top 2' that are worth working for the right equipment, but they are rare areas. Bima worked some of these, others are on leases I have access to. Even the Bima found out that the best ground was just on the surface, but as a bucket line they were the wrong tool. They briefly tried a crawler like the one we have, but their costs were too much to keep it running.

 

[Peyton Manning]

OK iffn I ever make it to Nome I want to take AK_Au_ Diver out for beer, I have to hear more stories and real info

 

[Peyton Manning]

hey cristo or some other producer!! get that dude on a real show!! we want the truth

 

[G1sammons]

Ak-au are you and article partners?

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

hey cristo or some other producer!! get that dude on a real show!! we want the truth

Mike Rowe said my name on the show twice, and they have shown me in three episodes so far, that I've seen (I've only seen maybe half of them)

Before the current show on Discovery, in 2008, I think it was, a guy from the History Channel came out and stayed with us and filmed a sizzle reel for a show pitch.

If I had the $3.5M to build my ideal dredge and platform, that would make an interesting show. It would cost another $500K to film and produce it into a show. I would need some serious help to find that kind of capital.

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

Ak-au are you and article partners?

Nope. If you mean Arctic_gold, he does his thing and we do ours. We help each other out, mostly him helping me out.

 

[G1sammons]

Nope. If you mean Arctic_gold, he does his thing and we do ours. We help each other out, mostly him helping me out.

what kind of crawler r u running ?

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

what kind of crawler r u running ?

It's an 18" straight tube suction dredge mounted to an excavator. It's way more complicated than it sounds. Arctic_gold showed pictures of it in post 105 on page 6 of this thread. It can outperform most 10" diver dredges most years, that is, until fuel and maintenance costs are factored in.

 

[G1sammons]

It's an 18" straight tube suction dredge mounted to an excavator. It's way more complicated than it sounds. Arctic_gold showed pictures of it in post 105 on page 6 of this thread. It can outperform most 10" diver dredges most years, that is, until fuel and maintenance costs are factored in.

wow
I know with a monster like that y'all have to have some crazy name for her or it !
That looks like it would be hard to run.. . If it's fast enough I would like to rent that to chase I my kids around! Lol