Wrote off the two bucket method for 3 years, then a guy in Santa Cruz made me try it on a nasty kelp day
I used to think the two bucket thing was just extra work for no reason. I'd show up with one bucket and a single bag, grab whatever I could see, and call it a day. Then last month at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz, this guy named Marty hands me a second bucket and says the grit in the sand ruins your pickers faster than salt water does. I figured he was just trying to slow me down. But we filled both buckets in 90 minutes and my hands weren't wrecked for once. The rinse bucket had a solid inch of sand at the bottom. Now I can't tell if I was dumb for skipping it or if it only matters on certain beaches. What's the real rule here?
So what happens when you hit a clean sandy beach with no grit at all, do you still drag two buckets around just out of habit? Marty's right that grit chews up pickers, but that only matters on beaches where the sand is coarse or mixed with shell bits and rocks, and on a fine sand beach the second bucket is dead weight you're carrying for nothing. Maybe the real rule is you match your setup to the beach, not that two buckets is always better than one.