But your top flight pirate wouldn't rest until he found something better. Why? Imagine how it was in the 1700s on the Spanish Main. The entire Caribbean Sea would have been infested with pirates for decades. Every pirate and his dog would have been burying treasure on obscure out of the way islands for years.
The supply of likely islands must have been running low.
It was inevitable that the day would come when a pirate, digging on an island he thought was known only to himself, would unearth previously buried treasure left there by some other pirate. This would be the day it it would dawn on that pirate that he must set sail for the Pacific Northwest.
The Pacific Northwest was the natural "next best place". To get here, a pirate would only have to sail around South America and up the coast of the Americas to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, then turn east towards Puget Sound. After that, it wouldn't take long to find the mouth of the Snohomish, which is the gateway to the Middle Fork of the mighty Snoqualmie River.
Because of the direct sea route to The Spanish Main, the area around North Bend would have been infested by a lot of pirates all searching for undiscovered islands to bury loot.
But not one of these marauding buccaneers would have noticed David's Island unless he arrived during a big flood.
The first pirate who saw a great flood in the area would have realized it immediately. This would be the best idea any pirate ever had. Treasure hunters following the pirates to the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie seeking their gold would never look for buried treasure on an island that wouldn't appear for another 100 years! The next pirate arriving in the area wouldn't bury his treasure on the island either, because by then the flood would be over, and he and everyone else could not know it was there.
Pirates must have buried their treasure here.
But the pirates of the 1700s didn't understand how technology would advance.
Because FEMA flood maps show where they think flooding will occur and banks insist that homeowners of houses subject to flooding must buy flood insurance, it was possible that one of these homeowners might want to do something about it other than just fork over his payment every year. The likelihood someone might want to eliminate his flood insurance requirement has increased recently, now that FEMA is imposing a 10% increase in premiums every year and is said to want to continue to do so as far into the future as anyone can see, because FEMA is bankrupt due to Katrina, and because extreme flooding events FEMA has to pay out on now happen more frequently in the US, a fact which global warming deniers assure us is not due to climate change.
If someone was to take up residence in the North Bend floodplain who understood what modern surveying instruments could do, who could find out about local surveys, and it happened that he owned a home on David's Island when he set out to see what he could do about his FEMA premium, the best plans of the smartest pirates who ever existed would be laid bare.
David's Island was discovered. All that remains is to find out how big the island is and dig up the treasure.
