Sunday 18 November 2012

Excal goes Deep Part 3 : River/Mud/Beach and a Broken Scoop

Heya all ,

Lets Start from "the End" - when i almost finished for the weekend... and my Scoop Handle snapped... Again... :-(


No, it is not a bad wood and no it is not small pipe on the scoop - it is MUD and me trying to work fast in the water and putting too much pressure on the handle. I am tall and have to have long handle, hence higher chance to snap it :-(. Next Step - To find 30-31mm Stainless steel Pipe to make handle

But lets get to the good part ! i didnt realize that i found silvers, till i cleaned up mud coin blobs :-)
and that is where i found Shilling & 2 sixpence, where one is 1887 Young Head Queen Victoria! - really happy with that one :-)


Another 2 coins i am very interested in are some copper , 3pence size, that i can not read at all , so i used pencil and paper to get a slip of them ,PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE , Please


As you can see one side has Britannia and another just wording...that possibly read Victoria.... PLEASE HELP!

And here is the best of the best for the weekend, that made me and all my friends say :"WOW!!" :


I am gonna test Diamonds tomorrow :-) lets hope they are real.
The Ring was Deep and has years of Mud Patina on it (not as bad as those from Rarotonga- maybe X years in mud, not like XX years in reef)

And all finds together with couple of bullets and 2 other Junk rings i found over the weekend:



Thanks for stopping By, have a nice day and do not forget to invite me for a friendly hunt :-)

Friday 16 November 2012

Excalibur Going Deep part 2 : Mission Bay

Took half Day off yesterday to get to 0.3 tide and spent 3 hours at Mission bay.
I went almost to buoys with Chest deep water (at a low tide, that means with full tide the depth is about 4.5 meters there)

Found total 15 coins, crap pendant, HUGE diver's weight ...
But the Best find of the day is my only second Silver Florin :


It was a very good day, learned beach a bit more...
But the biggest problem there - Clay and Mud, I almost broke my second Scoop handle, as it is a rally REALLY tough work to dig for stuff there :-( every target is like 5 minutes plus .

I've also met Ray and he showed me couple of his Awesome finds from the past...
... Some really cool finds... :-) was really happy and please that Ray shared those with me....


Wednesday 14 November 2012

Etrac 1.5 hours: Test of 12 DD coiltec

Really wanted to test out the coiltec 12 DD coil, so went to Erin point,
While i was Walking towards the park - found flattened Silver Ring :-)

Didnt find much, but 1921 UK sixpence, 1913 Penny, old Belt buckle/broch that was silver plated and a fired bullet that has no impact damage and a Junk Ring that rung 12-07:




Tomorrow will be better :-)

Monday 5 November 2012

Excalibur At Mission Bay: 4.5 Rings

Heya all,

Got a day off today, so decided to go for an early morning hunt.
As low tide was 6 am, i was pretty much running away from tidal water while walking the surf line.

The best find of the day is a nice pearl Silver ring :



And here are the rest 3.5 Rings :

The top 2 are stainless steel , where 1st is not so good quality, but second is marked "SURGICOL STAINLESS STEEL" not my spelling mistake this time, but that what it says on the ring Surgicol .

The Big Gold plated Ring got me really excited when it first popped out of sand... Oh well. next time :-)
And the.5 of  ring is a half of Silver toe ring.

Spent about 4 hours total with a little bit of coins... Nice day and a good exercise :-)

See you all at the beach

Thursday 1 November 2012

Return To Rarotonga :The Story

Heya All, I promised the story with some more pictures of your second Trip to Rarotonga .
Well, lets make it more broad than just my finds, i will cover all details and costs so you understand that it was awesome budget trip with wicked outcome :-)

I am not gona be like a travel agent, here are essential details to know :
Rarotonga  is the most populous island of the Cook Islands, with a population of 14,153 (census 2006), out of the country's total population of 19,569. It is 32 km (20 miles) in circumference and has an area of 67.19 km² (26 square miles). Flight is 4 Hours from New Zealand Direct Auckland -> Raro
For rest general info refer to Wiki :-)

Here is google maps shot that i will explain :

As the island almost round, we will treat is as a clock for further easier directions. 
The best of the best area is Muri lagoon with several atolls located at 3 to 5pm 
The whole area from 3-9 pm is best for swimming and snorkeling as it has wide reef area and sandy beaches
Where north side has nerrow reef area , rocks and almost no water during low tide ,
High tide is only .7 meters, so it is simply impossible to swim and for the same reason there is no colorful fish you would go after.   



We wanted to stay at the same place were at our FIRST TRIP  butfor the dates we booked flight we were able to get only 4/7 days, so other 2 nights we had to book at Club Raro,being the cheapest at the time .With the night arrival on Friday to saturday night 00:00 am we had to stay there till Monday before we cou ld move to MANEA VILLAS . We ere spending only evening at club raro and both days we were away at proper beach - Muri and other day at Fruits of Rarotonga (deeper place about 2m with lots of fish)
We traveled by Bus that cost 4$ one way or 25$ for 10 trips - recommend to buy it, or you can rent a scooter at 14$+ a day

Here we are, a Raro team :  Elena& Max, Andrew&Ira




Special Thank you to Maryanne at Manea Villas for having us back! your service was perfect as first time and we defo will be coming back :-)

Manea Villas are self contained villas with daily room service.To save on Food (THIS PART IS MOST IMPORTANT READ ON) we took a full suitcase of food per couple .
* you CAN NOT not brings fruits and vegetables to Raro, but you can if its is frozen supermarket sealed packs
* you CAN bring meet/fish/dairy products if they are all factory sealed

So spending about 300$ total in NZ on all general food and some specials - saved us Thousands on restaurant there. As you can see we had restaurant quality meals done our self:




The only  Products we were buying localy are Fresh Bread 5.4$ a loaf and local eggs at 6$ a dozen.
twice we bought Tiptop icecreams 2L containers at 12$ - but that is pretty much it.
All local free yammy treats included Banas/coconuts and Paw paw growing on the Villas' territory :






So General Holiday part was absolutely fantastic! 
Now, lets get to the metal detecting part.





For some of you who looked up tides and noted that its only .7 difference and would think you can detect 24/7.
You can, but with tide coming and going really strong currents flow in the lagoon and it is almost imppossible to sand on feet. Also you can not use sandscoop as all targets go below the light coral sand and settle of reef bed, that is like sponge. so the only way is to free dive and remove sand with your hand till bottom is exposed and take the target out of the pores.

The Ammount of coins in the lagoon is insane! but with the difficulty in water it takes  alot of time and effort to get them.
This time i got almost same amount of coins as i got on my first trip! :-)

Total Coins: 355

Cook Island coins:
5$ * 7
2$* 22
1$*28
---
50C*7
20C*5
10C*7
5C*4
Total 107$ spendable
NZ coins:

2$*52
1$*43
50C*24
20C*40
10C*48
5C*24

Total 147$ spendable


Australia coins total 9 with 6.15$ value

Oldest coin 19XX Uk penny , heaps on 1/2 cent and one Florin 1962 :-(

However i got one silver coin -  3D pence 1946 :-)




The over interesting coin i got was 1974 old rarotongan Dollar! it is massive to compare with current one and olso compare with old biggest nz coin -50cent :

The Other cool items are 2 pair of sunglasses , one of them is POLICE brand with Rrp150$ +



And all the best finds are here : 

The picture speaks for it self with what rings are what :-) 

Thanks for stopping by! See you at the beach !