On April 8th, I was rudely awakened by our new puppy Renfro at 6:15am (maybe it was because he wanted to celebrate his 7th Month birthday). Anyway, he dragged me out of bed 45 minutes to an hour earlier than normal.
Well once I was up - I thought to myself we've had a westerly wind all night, I should look at the beach. It was just barely light, but when I glanced out I realized that every inch of the surf line was covered with round objects. I'm trying to eyeball them with binoculars when I think I see a glass one in front of our house, so wearing my pajamas & wools socks, I tell Bob I'm headed for the beach.
I throw on my light weight beach coat, and my red ear muffs and run out - without even making coffee. Well I get down there, and it's a plastic float, and the wind is blowing 25mph, but I can't help myself I start walking the tide line. I get probably 100 feet and find a baseball size glass float, so I keep going... Another 100 feet and there's another one, okay this is irresistible, I'm clear to Driftwood Shores, and I find 2 more, then another 100 feet and I see something that looks like a rolling pin float as I run towards the surf, I snag it but a wave gets my feet, so I'm now wearing soaking wet wool socks, in my plastic yard clogs. But I look up and another 200 feet away, I'm positive I can see something basketball sized green & shiny in a net, so I pick up my pace and keep going... As I get closer, and it's still just barely light I'm positive it's a large glass float. Then I get up to it, and theres a clear one sitting right next to it, thats 1/3 again as big. I'm standing there looking at them, wondering how I'm going to get them both back! In addition to the small sack, of glass floats I'm already carrying - obviously leaving anything behind was not an option. I'd already passed up a really interesting aluminum float (never see those either), but I'd picked up a grapefruit sized plastic float in a net.
So I string my bag over the net of the plastic float, and then I take the plastic float's line, and string it through the net on the basket ball sized glass float and picked that up with my left hand, and pick the huge one up in my right hand - they are so big that I can't get one arm around them and hug them to myself, so I have to balance 10 lbs in the palm of each hand and walk home into the 25mph wind. They got heavier and heavier, and I proceeded to switch arms, next thing I know I'm setting them down every 20 feet and resting-then switching arms - finally I can see the house, and I'm hoping Bob will see me, oh yeah, I forgot the part that I ran out so fast that I didn't grab my cell phone. So I couldn't call for help.
I finally think that I can see Bob in the windows - so I raise my arms into the air like HELP! He's wondering why I keep stoping, and why I'm only using one arm to hold this big glass float, he can't tell that I'm carrying the 2nd even larger clear glass float either. Finally 2 houses before ours, when he's watching me stop and change arms & rest about every 10 feet he realizes I have 2. So he runs down to the beach, takes the big one out of my arms - runs back to the house, and drives off as I've nearly made him late to open the cleaners.
I get back to the house a few minutes later, at 7:15 call neighbors Benny & Debby (knowing I'm going to wake them up) tell them breathlessly, that they need to get out on the beach, as they're missing all the glass floats, and I've already hauled all that I could carry. They're out there 15 minutes later, and they went separate directions, and came back with 4 just bigger than a golf ball size glass floats, something I've seen but never found. I also called Kay to tell her about my finds, and she gets dressed and heads for the beach, she retreived the really cool aluminum float for me that I wasn't able to carry. I did tell her she should keep it, but apparently she doesn't appreciate yard art as much as I do!
Debby & Benny returned home to eat breakfast, and I headed for work. A few hours later Debby & Benny(they couldn't resist going back out again) found this odd object - 2 Blocks of styrofoam painted Orange tied together with a Metal Cylinder in between it that said MBARI - DANGEROUS DO NOT TOUCH. I told her that we had also found some objects 10 years ago that said similar things, and we called the Coast Guard, and they handled it, plus called us back after they checked them out. So the Coast Guard went out picked it up, and called her back, telling her it belonged to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute - Debby looked up their website and emailed them as well - and got a really nice response explaining that it was a "This is a deep locating beacon that we use for underwater navigation. Danger decal was because of internal batteries."
Even later that day...... Debby & Benny we're having lunch, and looked out and in washes a duplicate glass Float that Benny found 6 days earlier. Benny ran out and retrieved it.
It took me 22 years to find (3 Small Floats), now in exactly 14 days, I've found 9 more, but I'm looking at this as a 15 year weather event. Debby also found some cool things, like a rice paddle, a shoe last (form to make shoes), her chineese warrior seen in the pictures of the floats. We've also found some really interesting glass bottles, plastic floats & ships lightbulbs.
Benny and Debby had never found any glass floats, and now they have a perfect pair of chineese long line floats, and 4 golf ball sized japaneese floats.
I now have a perfect pair of chineese Long Line Floats, a giant japaneese Float, 2 japaneese rolling pin floats, and 4 softball size floats, the Amber one is a really unusual color, and the smallest one has a marking that I haven't researched yet.
Wow, this has been fun!
