Greg

For anchoring tent and sun canopy, I use cedar fence pickets cut about a foot long with a 1" hole drilled through them. Tie off guy lines to the pickets, and bury in about 8 inches of sand. Will hold up to VERY strong winds.

If you can make it down-island, I'd highly recommend it. My last outing to PINS began last Memorial day weekend. First five miles of beach were elbow-to-elbow campers. We drove down to Big Shell beach, and didn't have another campsite visible in either direction. Five days of total isolation, other than the intermittently passing vehicle.

When setting up camp, I like to park the truck on the windward side. Set up tent and canopy on the leeward side of the truck, build fire-ring on downwind side of the tent. I use a couple of the cheap little reflectors-on-a-stick to mark off my site on the tent side of the truck to be visible from vehicles at night.

Also recommend you bring a medium-sized shallow basin to keep full of water outside your tent. Use to rinse all the sand off your feet before entering tent. Sea water works fine for this.

You may want to bring in firewood. Collecting driftwood can be spotty at best.

Never been to PINS in the winter, so can't give advice there.

Happy camping!
Greg