Antique diamond ring recovered from longboat marina in Warwickshire

 

I received a call from Willi who lost his diamond ring that his partner gave to him only three days before!

She had been looking for this very special ring for about six months and finally found one, only to be told by Willi that it had only just slipped from his finger while they were moored on their longboat in the marina where they live.

This happened about three weeks ago and they had since been on holiday on their boat, when they decided to give me a call.

In my time as a ringfinder I’ve done a fair few searches in water with great success. So we agreed I would do a search on Saturday 21st.  I was told the depth was about 25 inches, so off I went with my trusty Sorex Pro, waders and a couple of scoops.

When I got there the whole situation seemed a lot more challenging, there was no gentle slope onto the water but a drop straight into the marina.

A ladder was now required which we soon managed to find. Now the fun began , the depth may have been 25 inches in one place but it was more like 4 feet plus about 8 to 10 inches of soft silt. This meant the control box had to re positioned to the very end of the detector shaft and detecting with a normal one handed manner was not possible. Instead I had to use two hands and use the detector almost like a stirrer while also trying to keep my scoop and floating plastic tray nearby so I could offload the silt/clay into as it would not wash through my scoop very well.

Anyway after about 20 minutes, I kept getting a very clear signal that I just had to recover, problem was I was also getting very strong signals from the steel hull of a nearby boat, so that had to be moved. After much perseverance and much smelly water filling up my waders I managed to remove the signal from the marina bed and emptied the contents of my scoop into the tray. The pure signal was now in the tray! After a little feel around in the silt out came this beautiful ring. The only signal I managed to recover and it was the lost ring!

The look on Willi’s face was priceless, along with the sound of delight from both him and his partner and a fair few onlookers.

This has to be one of my most memorable recoveries , and so pleased at the outcome.

Willi has now been told he must have the ring re sized. Good idea as I really don’t want to have to go back into that slime pit again!