Marathon hunts

I was out of town for a few days and had a chance to do something I rarely get to do recently, which is metal detect over 3 hours.  
Between work and family time, my normal beach or water hunts rarely go above 3 hours, unless I run across a special metal detecting situation. 
Yesterday I hit several Treasure Coast beaches and spent 5 hours searching for Spanish treasure coins before finally giving in to the sanded in conditions and searching another 3 hours for modern jewelry. 
I eyeballed an olive jar shard in the high tide line at the site of an early 1600s Spanish shipwreck and unfortunately only found a handful of coins and junk jewelry searching later on a tourist beach for modern jewelry. 
My longest day ever treasure hunting was last November when I walked onto a beach at 9pm and arrived home at 9pm the following evening. 
Yesterday I forgot just how well balanced my metal detectors are,  I was using an Anderson carbon fiber shaft on my Excalibur II and my CTX 3030 already has a well balanced collapsable carbon fiber shaft. 
It is really good to know that if you do run across a situation where you want to spend a full day on the beach, you can. 
My friend was using a GPX 5000 with a detecting harness, he also was not tired at the end of day. 
A balanced metal detector is an often overlooked key metal detecting factor.  If you sitting at home nursing a sore arm or shoulder instead of metal detecting, you may miss a golden opportunity at the beach.
Custom straight shafts or a detecting harness are important metal detecting accessories during prime beach or water hunting situations. 
Marathon beach or water hunts are possible when you take the issue of the weight of your metal detecting equipment out of the treasure hunting equation. 
That also applies to your recovery tools, use a stainless steel scoop for water hunting and an aluminum scoop for beach hunting. 
A sore arm from using the wrong type of scoop can just as easily stop you from being able to metal detect on marathon hunts.