Post #361058 by Polynesiac on Wed, Feb 13, 2008 8:57 PM

Great idea for a thread, Harro

I would love to find an orange life ring at the beach, but I have yet to be fortunate enough to find one. I think I may just break down and buy one! (or five)
My dog and I wake up early every morning and go for a walk on the beach and we find all kinds of stuff - mostly trash that washes down through the stormdrains, but we do find quite a few lobster trap bouys:

I didn't put much thought into the decorating, I just started hanging them as I found them and my back yard kind of turned into a nautical (very run-down) beach shack.

The absolute coolest thing I've so far is a 10' surfboard:

I am also very fortunate to live near where the Hedley's lived and I walk the very same coast that they did back in the 30's and 40's as they made their fortune with flotsam and jetsom. It's sad to think that all the cool usefull stuff that they found (wooden boxes, fishing flaots, cork floats) is now mostly plastic waste.

We also find boat bumpers, drift wood (natural wood), drift lumber, boat parts, pier pilings and other fishing industry stuff like plastic floats. Other non-fishing industry stuff I've come accross include things that kids like to chuck off of cliffs (like rusted bar-b-ques, bikes), engines (old VERY smooth engines - I know of at least 3 in the area), a truck axle (with 4 wheels and tires stiff attached) what appears to be either a very large old tree trunk, or a mast from a ship, fossils (tons of marine fossils along the coast) and (on a sad day) a 27 foot dead grey whale. I'd love to come across a shipwreck like yours, bigbro, but I have yet to find one of those! We do have an old shipwreck of a greek freighter (the Dominator) near the base of point vicente light house, but it wrecked in the 60's and all that's left now is bent metal. You wouldn't know it was a shipwreck just by looking at it. Still cool, though.