Did you try sticking the tip in the wet sand before you turned it on?
I guess since you had all this trouble probably not.
Doing this will ground balance it to the surrounding area, hone down and sharpen the scanning field somewhat and cut out most falsing and jittery behavior.
Actually, it doesn't really false but it is so sensitive it will pick up all surrounding minerals and there is a lot of that in wet saltwater sand.
The directions say you can retune this way after turning it on, sticking the tip on the mineralized area and hitting the button once but powering up with the tip surrounded by the mineralized area seems to work a bit better and more efficiently.
From the manual...
Fast Retune for Mineralized Ground
To tune out the detection of saltwater, wet sand or highly mineralized
ground, hold the tip of the Pro-Pointer AT to the water, sand or soil and
quick-press the button () for an instant Retune.
If necessary, repeat this Fast Retune to further eliminate any
environmental response. Note: An alternate means of eliminating the
ground response is to reduce Sensitivity.
Lower sensitivity won't really work if the area you are searching is heavily saturated with minerals, you need to re-tune one way or the other.
Works great in my mineralized dirt, I assume it will work decently in the salt, also.
