Date 12-22-06 Location Type Ocean Beach Detecting Time 6 hours Detector Minelab Explorer SE / Stock Coil

Stewart Beach, Galveston

Looking at the satellite weather pics it looked like the front would pass by the morning. This was good news. I had my new SE and really wanted to try it out on the beach. It is about an hour and fifteen minute drive to the beach from my house so I got up at 5:00AM, got ready and hit the road. When I arrived, the back of the front was just offshore heading east and the wind was blowing from the north. This made it a little cold, but the water was being blown out to sea which gave me a bit more wet sand to hunt.

The SE and the beach...all to myself

Once I got to the surf I was glad I had Black Widow headphones. Those huge ear cups kept my ears nice and warm. No one was on the beach. I set the SE up in All Metal mode and ferrous tones. This would allow me to hear everything with potentially good targets giving a high tone and iron targets giving a low tone. I did not find much in the wet sand, but the depth of some of the trash and coins I dug made me confident that the SE wasn't missing much.

While I was shuffling along the beach I noticed a guy on a bike coming my way. As he got closer he slowed down and stopped next to me. He was an elderly oriental gentleman. He watched me intently from about five feet away. I said "hi" to him and kept detecting. I got a signal and dug out a pulltab. He acted like it was gold. He motioned for me to hand it to him and he examined it closely for a long time. He gave it back and I put it in my pouch. A minute later, with him still watching, I dug another pulltab. I said "another pulltab" and put it in my pouch. He freaked out and held out his hands grasping for the pulltab as it disappeared into the pocket. I said "it was just another pulltab". You would have thought I deprived him of his greatest joy. I tried not to laugh and kept hunting. After about five more minutes he got on his bike and rode down the beach. He never said a word the entire time. In retrospect I wish I had spoken more to the gentleman, if our linguistic capabilities allowed. From some of the finds I've seen from the Japanese mainland, they haven't seen many detectors.

I took a break at the car and thought about what I should do next. I decided to detect the volleyball courts. When I got out of the car I looked down and right between my feet was a gold earring. Kind of ironic, but a good find nonetheless. I made a few passes across the volleyball courts and got a signal in the high foil range. It was very deep. I dug, checked, dug, checked and finally found that it was out of the hole. After a little searching I spotted a nice little gold horseshoe ring. A keeper at last. I left shortly afterwards. It was a great day at the beach.

HH! The Beep Goes On

Gold horseshoe ring and gold earring

Seagulls...you can always tell which way the wind is blowing since they face into the wind

Wind blowing from the North

Outgoing ship

Ships waiting to unload