Lost Ring Recovered in North Dakota.

On Wednesday, July 17, I received a text wanting to know if I traveled to a very distant location. I told them that I didn’t know for sure, I would have to look on a map. This was a request from a fellow coworker of a family member. So, I told them that I would do it. I took off and made it to the location by 7:00 PM. my concern was to have enough daylight to make things a little easier.

They had told me that the caller’s husband had been concerned about losing his ring, so he took it off and put it in a compartment on his jet ski.  As you know that non-moving jet skis have a little stability issue and was pushing off from a dock and the jet ski rolled over. The compartment that held the ring popped open and the ring fell out. While it was a terrible incident, it was a blessing that it happened in a location that was only in 3 1/2 feet of water.

I went into the water at the location described and as you can imagine a boat launch that has been in operation for many, many years had debris from those years. A bottle cap or pull-tabs here and there, fishing weights, boat trailer parts and the many other items that you would think would be associated with well used boat launch. It was a much more difficult hunt then what I was thinking. The things that were going right were that the location was a small area, and the water was shallow in that location. There was small and medium size cobble or round rocks on the bottom that was making scooping a signal very difficult. What I was thinking was going to be a 30-40 minute turned into a 2-hour recovery.

I had brought 2 detectors with me, a Minelab Equinox 900 with a 10-inch coil, and a Garrett AT Pro with a small D coil. After hunting for an hour and a half, I decided to switch over to the AT Pro to help discriminate the different targets.  This move was my saving grace. It allowed me much more control over the targets and pinpointing those targets was key.   After about another 30 minutes I found the ring. What a beautiful sight it was to see it in my scoop.  A white gold men’s wedding band, just like described.

Another Happy ending.

Turns out – I guess I do go out that far after all, who knew….

OK it was a 5  1/2 hour drive one way.

I also have a God daughter that lived along the route, and I could make nervous that I was checking on her.

Life is so good.