Hello from the TCI

[Gringo]

Hello. This is my first post here. Wife and I moved to the tropics almost three years ago. We just bought a Minelab Excalibur to use underwater. No luck with it so far, in fact, we havent been able to get it to work.

Here is a view from where we are building a home here, overlooking the Caicos Bank with all its shipwrecks. Yesterday morning at dawn.

 

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[warsawdaddy]

Welcome to the forum.Anxious to see the finds and pics of your new home(3yrs ago).

 

[Gringo]

Thanks for the welcome. We didn't build the house three years ago...its just being completed now. We are several weeks from moving in.

I do have lots of photos of underwater sites. We have found some shipwrecks from the 1700's, and a six foot Admiralty anchor from around 1800. The anchor is now next to a driveway. We know we can find more if we can just figure out how to use this Excalibur.

There are hundreds of photos on our blog site, which I think I got listed correctly on the profile here. I am new at this forum, obviously.

We live in an area largely unexplored, with an estimated thousand shipwrecks in these islands since the late 1500's. We dive a lot, and have great hopes for some interesting finds with the Excalibur, eventually. Once we figure it out.

This is what an admiralty anchor looks like sitting on the bottom in about 15 ft. of water:

 

[Gringo]

Here are some bottle bottoms we have found on one wreck site. We found ballast stones, fire brick, and a metal gudgeon. Plus a couple dozen of these hand blown bottle pieces.

 

[warsawdaddy]

Looks like you are in a 'virgin' area.We have several divers on the forum.I'm sure they will see your post soon.Go to the 'Detector Review'thread and ask for input on the Excal.

 

[tac512ltd]

Wow ! What a gorgeous home site. I hope you get to all those wreck sites soon. Sorry, can't help with the excal problem, but, I'm sure someone here will be able to guide you. Good luck!

 

[warsawdaddy]

Here's the thread.Maybe if you pm the guys they can help.

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,26297.msg942744/topicseen.html#new

 

[VanGone]

Man that is an awesome place to build. Excellent post,keep us posted.
Van

 

[Gringo]

Well, I wasnt going to innundate a Treasure hunting site with house construction, boating, or fishing photos. If you like that, there are hundeds of photos on the blog we started a few months back.

I do have a lot of underwater reef-type photos, as well, but will try to keep my exuberance in posting photos in check here. Having to keep them to 256KB pretty much takes a lot of the detail out I notice...I need to work on that. How to shrink a 7 meg photo to 256K and not lose any resolution......hmmmm
thats a tough one.

Thanks for the link to the detector thread....Looks like I am not the only one who wasnt able to get anything useful from an Excalibur out of the box. Its not like its my first detector, either. I owned a Garrett in the past, and have a White's for land stuff. I just needed something to go underwater....that's where the really good, untouched stuff is here.

 

[tac512ltd]

Gringo - I'd love to browse through your blog. I don't see it under your profile. If it is appropriate could you please note it on this thread. Thanks!

 

[Gringo]

Sure. I think if you click on the "website" button under my name it should send you there, but that would be the latest, just posted on "Health Care" ( a lot of people have asked me about that, people curious about moving to the tropics) here's a link that should take you directly to some of the underwater stuff:
http://2gringos.blogspot.com/search/label/Shipwrecks

You can move back and forward to other topics and posts from there. It's organized like a typical Google Blog...with older posts listed to the right. And topics that will take you to specific subject matter.
Hope you like it.

 

[alwayslookin]

Gringo--

Welcome to Tnet. Beautiful building site!! You may get lost in all the threads and forums on here but the people are great and will help with any kind of related question you might have. Are you near any potential hurricane areas? Just wondering.

Good luck on the wrecks!!

Dave

 

[tac512ltd]

Thank you for posting the link. I just browsed the pictures, I will read this afternoon. Looks like you've found paradise. There seems to be explorable places all around you.

 

[Gringo]

in keeping with the "Daily Snapshot" theme, yesterday afternoon we took the boat out and found a wrecked Haitian sloop that had made it to our island from Haiti over the holidays. Here's a "daily snapshot" from yesterday afternoon:

 

[Gringo]

Here's some sea caves on the tiny cay called "Bird Rock";

 

[Gringo]

Here is a piece of "split shot", and a piece of "grape shot" we found on a wreck site we are working on from time to time down here. Both circa 1700.


This piece is still encrusted. I accidentally broke it,and inside is a metal tube of some kind, and a piece of wood. I wonder if it is some kind of smooth-bore weapon: This is from the same wreck:


This is what it looked like, generally, before I broke it open:


This is another piece we found. It's sort of "spike" shaped, but heavily encrusted. Its very heavy, definitely iron:


We have about 30 bricks and a dozen fire bricks from this site, so we know it was an European ship big enough to have a cook stove on board. The glass bottle pieces date it late 1600's, early 1700's. Heres the latest pieces of glass from it, before cleaning up:


This is stuff we have found free diving, just sitting on the bottom not far from a ballast stone pile. Can you see why we are so frustrated to have spent $ 1100 on a new MineLab Excaliber and can't seem to make it give us any useful signals? Imagine what's buried in the sand around this site, with this stuff sitting on the surface undisturbed for 300 years...

 

[Eu_citzen]

Very nice pics! Have you thought that there might b so much around metal that you'll need a smaller coil for the excal?

 

[tac512ltd]

What a place ! Hope you get the hang of the Excal soon. Good luck, when you do.

 

[Gringo]

well, right now we are struggling with the winter, ya know. It got down to 69 degrees last night, but its warming up fast today. And the shore is covered with the "white stuff"...


This poor guy has to stand there barefooted with no winter coat on, cleaning conch. And you think YOU have a tough winter...

 

[Gringo]

Very nice pics! Have you thought that there might b so much around metal that you'll need a smaller coil for the excal?

smaller coil? Hmm....never thought of that. I got the 1000....whats that, a 10 inch coil? How far away from metal should it be before its not detecting anything? now, on this site, there is probably very little metal. At least from the ship....but I don't know that. Thats why I got an Excaliber...to determine if there is any metal there... Since its such an old wreck, we would be interested in artifacts, too. I am even thinking of taking a box of the encrusted stuff we have to get it x-rayed...if the doc will go along with it.