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Opportunity Knocks but You Have to Open the Door

bdahunter

New member
I wasn't really feeling up to hunting yesterday but I decided to catch the low tide in the afternoon anyway. Unfortunately, the wind and waves had pushed a mass of Sargasso Seaweed into the swimming hole at The Royal Naval Dockyard which would make for an ugly hunt as I tried to push my way through floating seaweed a foot deep.
[attachment 78017 P1100007.JPG]

This seaweed has little gas filled pods that make it float and it gets wrapped around the detector, making it very difficult to swing let alone see the bottom when digging up a target. I just wasn't feeling up to that much effort today so I headed to 9 Beaches Resort instead and began working the water.
9 Beaches Resort is an ecotourism resort with cottages on stilts out over the water and glass panels in the floor so you can look down and see the fish swimming below your cottage, Kewl! This beach has produced some gold and silver in the past for me but frankly I didn't care if I found much of anything as I just wanted some exercise.
[attachment 78018 P1090003.JPG][attachment 78019 P1090004.JPG]

The charter fishing boats were coming back in from a day of sportfishing through Hogfish Cut which runs beside 9 Beaches, so every few minutes I would get bashed by the wake of these sportfishers as they plowed past before slowing down for the Green Sea Turtle Reserve just beside 9 Beaches. It kept the hunt interesting because I found very little today, just a couple of bucks in clad and a zippo lighter. (lots of junk though which is surprising for an eco friendly resort)
[attachment 78020 P1090002.JPG]

After 2 hours of not very much I was almost ready to pack it in for the day when a woman came down to the beach from the hotel, it was the hotel manager. Susan wanted to know what I was doing so I began to educate her about our hobby. Her demeanour which was initially cool soon began to warm up as I told her how I removed all of the trash I found in the hotel swimming area, including broken glass and fish hooks; obviously she was starting to see the benefit of having me detect in her swimming area. I also explained that I was always happy to help locate missing wedding bands if any of her guests should lose then while staying at her hotel, turning a disaster into a memorable and positive experience. Susan liked that idea even better and proceeded to inform me that the gate to the hotel would soon be locked and she didn't want me to be trapped in the hotel compound but please feel free to hunt the hotel beaches whenever I wanted.
Now to be fair I could have hunted most of these beaches anyway as all areas below the high tide mark are public property, however access to them is private except by water, so by getting the hotel on side I have easy access to all 9 beaches and they are friendly instead of hostile. A little PR goes a long way in this hobby and it is relatively easy to dispel some of the common misunderstandings that most of the public have about metal detecting. I have a similar arrangement with another hotel after I helped them locate a guest's lost ring, they had tried to find it for 2 months without any luck, crawling around on their hands and knees looking for it. I found that ring in under 10 minutes and made the hotel staff and the elderly lady who lost her 50 year old wedding band very happy indeed!
Occassionally, I run into a jerk that won't see reason but these are by far the minority of the public I meet. So be a good ambassador for our hobby and you too can reap the benefits. You'll gain new territory to hunt (often exclusively) and a smile instead of a frown from the people you meet while hunting.

Cheers,

BDA:cool:
 
BDA -

Very nice post. Man that's a lot of muck n' sea weed in the first photo. I don't know how you'd get through that stuff. Just too much salad for me to even think about. Your scoop must get filled quite quickly trying to retrieve something in that goop.
 
The WEED will be an annoyance for the next month or so and then it will disapate, it happens every year. The weed drifts up from the Sargasso Sea to the south and makes a mess of the beaches plus it can make hunting difficult. That pic showed a particularly bad case and I just didn't feel up to plunging into that morass. That is also the beach where I had a run in with a shark and I really want to have good visibility in that spot.
My motivation with the hotel manager was 1 part Boy Scout and 1 part Pirate. I wanted easy access to all of her beaches and I wanted her onside with detecting. It was a real win/win outcome.
Interestingly enough, the point that 9 Beaches Resort is located on used to be the Canadian Armed Forces Submarine Listening Base back in the Cold War. I occassionally come across neat stuff that dates to that era. It also has the remains of a 1700's cannon emplacement on Daniel's Head Island which was abandoned when the fort was demolished by an exploding cannon that blew up on test firing. Artillery was a risky business back in the old days, you might blow the enemy up or you might blow yourself up.
I'm looking forward to some interesting finds there over the coming months.

Cheers,

BDA:cool:
 
Beautiful pics. BDA, we can never have to many Ambassadors for our hobby thanks for being one on your fabulous island. I would love to visit there some day. Thanks for sharing that story, we can all learn from it. HH
 
Great. I have done the same and have actually shown people the junk, hooks, etc. that I pull up. It goes a long way for the hobby.

Surfline
 
...and when they advance the cause of our hobby and results in the expansion of one's territory, hey! All the better.

I want to thank you for giving us your reports beautiful Bermuda. I doubt I will ever make it there so I must upon you writings to know even an inkling of what it must be like there.

Have much fun and find much treasure--even in relationships. <><

AJ
 
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