other ways to visit ciao...

Here are some other ways to keep in touch with Ciao Newport Beach.  We are always on facebook and pinterest. Plus you can join us on instagram via the Newport Harbor Home Tour! 

ciao! Fabiana

Mick Mackie- MP Lives On Pt. 3

Mick's recent shaping flurry has resulted in a couple of new flexstiks for himself (which makes sense given I've got his earlier one and he's not getting it back any time soon). They're goers he says, and the MP connection is the shack they were crafted in which Michael also used to bang a few boards out of circa 79-80. Definitely seems to be some shaping mojo hanging around that place.

The most productive area of a beach

In my opinion, the most productive area to search on the beach Is always the area you choose to detect after reading the beach. 
I never know if I will be water hunting, wet sanding, or dry sanding until I get to the beach to metal detect. 
I just go with the flow, whatever part of the beach looks the best is the place I try my luck.
My local beaches have been very sanded in, making the water the best place to find jewelry.
I would not hesitate to search the dry sand or wet sand, if I thought both areas were better  places to find jewelry.
Not being a straight line, one dimensional hunter will lead to a wide variety of finds.
This photograph of silver coins and gold jewelry from the 1950s is a perfect example of why you cannot just search one area of the beach, as many wet sanders and water hunters do. 
These finds from the 1950s were all found in the dry sand several days after hurricane Sandy had passed by the Florida coast. 

Other beach and water hunters had searched the lower beach, but only the wet sand and water. 
I went metal detecting over several nights, searching the upper beach and found a pouch full of silver coins and gold jewelry with my CTX 3030. 
Many finds were shallow targets, left behind in previous high tide lines, just waiting for an enterprising dry sander.  I use this strategy when searching for Spanish treasure coins on the Treasure Coast of Florida. 
Just like gold jewelry does not mysteriously fall off people on tourist beaches when they step foot in the wet sand, silver reales do not just wash up and wait for treasure hunters in the wet sand.
The more areas of the beach you make an effort to search, the more coins and jewelry you will find. 
High tides deposit coins and jewelry all over the beach, it does not make treasure hunting sense to search just one area of the beach all the time. 

Volunteers Needed for Shorebird Monitoring

AAfCW is proud to continue our active conservation, education and outreach work for a third season with our state and federal partners due in part to funding from the NFWF Long Island Sound Futures Fund. Below is a news release from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service ahead of the 2014 shorebird monitoring season in Connecticut. You can also find the original document to download by clicking here. Please note that there will be two training sessions, one for past monitors and one for new volunteers, and that the location has changed from previous years. If you previously volunteered as a monitor you will be contacted by the USFWS for more information about the refresher session soon.

	United States Department of the Interior   FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
	Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge 733 Old Clinton Road Westbrook, Connecticut 06498-1030 Phone: 860-399-2513 Fax: 860-399-2515

NEWS RELEASE
                                               

         To be Released: Immediately                                        Contact: Shaun Roche

                             Phone: (860) 399-2513

 

Subject:  Volunteers Needed for Shorebird Monitoring

Spend your summer days at the beach and help protect a federally threatened species! The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners are seeking volunteers to monitor piping plovers and other shorebirds from early April until late August at beaches across our state.  A training and orientation session for new volunteers will be held on Saturday, March 15^th 2014 from 10:30am to 12:00noon at the Kellogg Environmental Center at 500 Hawthorne Ave. Derby, CT; past volunteers will be offered a refresher from 9:00 to 10:15am.  The sessions will review the following: biology of the piping plover, how to monitor breeding pairs and chicks, volunteer organization and logistics, and law enforcement information.

Atlantic Coast populations of piping plovers return to the Connecticut coast in March from their wintering grounds on the Gulf Coast and Caribbean.  The cryptic nests of the piping plover are extremely susceptible to human disturbance, predation, and tidal wash outs. To enhance the survival and productivity of birds breeding in Connecticut, an annual monitoring partnership is cooperatively sponsored by Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), Audubon Connecticut, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Connecticut Audubon Society, the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History and The Nature Conservancy.  

Working at locations across coastal Connecticut, our volunteers observe the shorebirds, record and report nesting data, and educate the beach-going public about the monitoring program. Volunteers work 4 hour shifts from April until the end of the breeding season (usually in August) and must donate a minimum of 4 hours per month. The work can be very rewarding, as volunteers will have the opportunity to positively impact nesting success for threatened shorebirds across the state.

For more information on the training session or for directions, please email USFWS Visitor Services Manager Shaun Roche at shaun_roche@fws.gov.  Reservations are not required; but an e-mail letting us know you will be attending is appreciated. 

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Detailed directions to the CT DEEP Kellogg Environment Center can be found on their website in this PDF file. Below is a Google map of where the site is. Click the route arrow in the upper right of the white box with the address below to be taken to Google Maps to plug in your starting address for specific and complete directions.

Florida bars and bling

This past weekend I told my wife I would be hitting the bar early on Saturday morning.  Of course my wife knew exactly what bar I was talking about, the sand bar opposite a busy tourist beach entrance. 
Due to work and daddy duties I have been a "Weekend warrior" over the last few months, but when I do get the chance to go detecting I like to maximize my chances of finding bling by searching the best looking spot on the beach. 
If the lower beach is sanded in, the upper beach or inside the water away from shore are the best places to search for jewelry. 
Saturday morning the low tide gave me a chance to wade offshore and search a promising looking sloped sand bar. 
I started to recover quarters and dimes, which is always a good sign when searching along the bottom slope of a sand bar.  Easily detectable coins in the area, was a sign that the area had not been searched recently by the competition. 
About 20 minutes into the early morning water hunt I recovered a nice chunk of 14K gold with 23 really nice diamonds. 

I did manage to recover a few small pieces of silver jewelry but my water hunt was cut short by the returning high tide. 
I saw five other people metal detecting in the area, three water hunters searching along the sandy first drop off inside the water, and two wet sanders walking along the lower beach.  
Many shallow water hunters on my local beaches become lulled into doing the same Groundhog day style water hunting as wet sanders, walking in a straight line just inside the water hoping to just run across a piece of jewelry. 
The lower beach can be very productive, but if it is sanded in you have no chance of finding anything if you search the same area every time. 
Stay away from being tied to searching one area of the beach or water, the more you move around, the more chance you have of finding jewelry. 
Look for promising areas and imagine where you would lose jewelry,  getting hit by waves rushing over a sand bar could be that place. 
Unless, you think all gold rings mysteriously slip off fingers when people step in the wet sand? 

Spirit Of Akasha- MP Lives On Pt. 2

Andrew Kidman has wrapped up his latest project and officially launched it in mad style- a premiere in San Sebastian followed by the full multi media event at the Sydney Opera House? Nice work for a Narrabeen lout. It's all explained here better than I could hope to explain it, and definitely seems like something to see on the big screen. Here's hoping there's a US show in the works, and in the meantime you can get the musical end of it all here- there's the new Windy Hills recording available there too.

the Downton Abbey Finale tonight!

The seasons of Downton Abbey seem to just fly by!  Will we find out tonight the fate of  Lady Edith's baby daddy, a love for Lady Mary, or Bate's whereabouts on the day of the creepy valet's suspicious death?    I will be watching with "Bated" breath!  Tell me what you think will happen. 

ciao! Fabiana

do you have a favorite Cary Grant film?

My favorite Cary Grant film has got to be the Philadelphia Story. I could watch it over and over.  And what a great pairing with Katherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart.  He's so quirky fun in his early years, and then of course in his later years, he is so sophisticated! Meanwhile, enjoy the eye candy...  

 

 

 

 

ciao! Fabiana

Beware of Big Churches

Do you like attending in big churches?


The reason why mega churches thrive is because they have the capacity to provide as many services that seekers may be looking for. The downside is in the shallowness of the people’s spirituality. For in such sea of faces, there are many who can easily get drowned in the frenzy of many activities, left uncared for, and not followed up for discipleship.

Thus, the tension for the leaders of these mega churches is in the width against depth of ministry that produces true follower of Christ. The fact is that even in Jesus' ministry where Christ himself met the needs of more than 5,000 food-hungry consumers, not many turned out to become a  follower of His. By the time He was done with His ministry, He only had around 500 followers left. I suppose it won't be different in the big churches we love to go to when Christ returns.  I wish I am wrong on this.

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Note: According to findings, people who come to church the first time are generally consumers. They will evaluate the worship service the way they shop for their primary doctor or car insurance provider. Regardless of how the pastor preaches, the slightest dislike can be enough to send them looking for another church.

More on how to find gold chains

Many beach hunters struggle to find gold chains at first, but once you find gold chains the audio response become easier to recognize.
A gold chain in your scoop basket can come from the most unimpressive and unlikely target response.
Similar to how a faint signal can turn out to be a deeply buried big gold ring,  big gold chains only a few inches deep without pendants can be short faint signals.
It is highly unlikely that the average beach hunter walking along the beach will detect even a good size gold chain without a pendant.
When using my Minelab metal detectors,  a low tone from a gold chain can be fleeting, even when plodding along using a slow sweep speed.
That is why it is so important to investigate any low tone signal, no matter how abrupt or faint it may sound.
There is a good chance you can hear the same signal again,  if you move your search coil away and bring it slowly back over the original target area using a short sweeping wiggle motion.
If you detected a gold chain without a pendant, you may only have picked up the lobster clasp.
If the gold chain has a pendant, it may only be the pendant you detected.
Slow methodical beach and shallow water hunters will have a better chance of finding gold chains than people who try to cover an area quickly.
Many of my largest gold chains, with and without pendants, came from soft unimpressive signals.
Loud booming low tones can have you thinking gold chains, but turn out to be tin cans and sunglasses.
It is the signals you think are not going to amount to much, that turn out to be gold chains and bracelets.
A useful tip when investigating fleeting low tone signals on the beach, is to use your foot to move sand across the target area.
I recovered this gold necklace last year after investigating a short faint low tone in the dry sand and moving the sand with my foot, I saw the necklace and picked it up and put it in my finds pouch.

The 18K gold ring in the photo was found a few feet away from the gold bracelet, perhaps someone had taken this gold jewelry off before going swimming and lost them. 
Most of my gold chains and bracelets have come from the towel line in the dry sand and along the high tide line on tourist beaches. 
Mole-ing around beach entrances using a tight search pattern and small search coil, is an excellent way of increasing your chances of finding gold chains and bracelets. 

Third Beach

We had a pretty benign January, but it seems like the last two weeks has just been one new storm every 24 hours.  Fortunately, many hit hardest at night, leaving us some very pretty days in between the squalls.  Early Sunday morning, I took advantage of a lull in the action to drive out to La Push. Saturday night's storm had subsided and the drive across 101 was beautiful with clear patches and a little sunshine and fresh snow low on the hills.

I was on Third Beach by 11:00. The skies were gray - but dry - and the tide was pretty high, but it was a great dose of the Olympic Coast, which is exactly what I'd come looking for.

Third Beach, like most of the beaches along this coast, is a glorified pocket beach. Its shape is largely defined by rocky headlands - that confine the beaches - and the interaction of Pacific Ocean waves with the complicated bathymetry and clusters of sea stacks - that shapes the beaches. Ultimately, this coastline is probably a reflection of the geology -- an assortment of resistant sedimentary blocks (the headlands and stacks) with much softer stuff in between (the bays and beaches).

AERIAL VIEW

There's a waterfall at the south end - basically a hanging valley where the ocean has cut landward faster than the small stream can cut downward. The waves had cut into a very high sandy berm near the stream mouth - providing some indication of how dynamic this beach must be. Many of bluffs along here are actively collapsing onto the beach. Some appear to be fairly slow-moving slides, but there was a big pile down the beach that looked like it must have come down both quickly and recently.

The tide was too high and the waves too big to explore safely and I look forward to coming back for longer in nice weather and when the tide is out. But it's days like this when stuff actually happens!

By the time I got to Second Beach, an hour or so later, the wind had picked up (the tide, too, there was little beach to be seen). And by the time I got into La Push, the next storm had fully arrived. I ate my sandwich in my car out at the jetty with the wipers on high and the car rocking in the wind. La Push is worthy of a whole post in itself - several, actually - but it will have to wait for a trip where I can get some better pictures.

I drove over to Rialto Beach, but between the storm, the water level, and all those big logs on the move, I decided against walking north to Hole in the Wall. Next time! It was a very wet drive back to Seattle.

Edmonds

I have this peculiar little hang up. If you're going to spend all day in a meeting or a workshop about beach stuff, and it's held within a stone's throw of the beach, you should actually go to the beach.  Even if it's only for five or ten minutes early in the morning and there's a high tide and a bitterly cold north wind.

I like the Edmonds waterfront. I guess that's because despite its developed setting, there are still beaches and most of them are publicly accessible.  It's a far cry from the large spit that once separated a big salt marsh from the Sound (map is from 1872) - the marsh that's left is a small remnant of the original and the barrier is segmented into a few artificially confined pocket beaches - but I wish we could figure out how to do this with some of our other small town waterfronts.

AERIAL VIEW

And here are a couple of earlier posts from April 2009, when it wasn't quite so cold as this Monday morning two weeks ago.

- Brackett's Landing North

- Edmonds