Marys husband was fishing at Whatuwhiwhi while on holiday in the Doubtless Bay area.
He was doing quite well, and landed a nice Kahawai.
While he was cleaning the fish in the tide, his wedding ring slipped off and was lost.
Mary later posted on the local Facebook pages asking for people to keep an eye out for it – I know the beach well, and knew it would be unlikely to be exposed on the surface until a favourable erosion event took place – if ever.
On the basis of this, and with an earlier « Pay it Forward » recovery in-hand, I decided to make the 100km trip to Tokerau peninsula to catch the next low tide…at 3am.
It was a pleasant night, clear skies meant that I was able to work the beach by starlight and the light breeze coming off the sea carried the smell of seaweed.
It doesn’t get much better than this.
I had a rough start point, so started to work back and forth along the beach as the tide dropped.
With a campground nearby, the usual aluminium can tabs were present in good numbers though.
An hour passed, then in the wash at the waters edge, I got a double-thump in the phones.
The broken shell sand was loose enough for me to push my hand into it and my fingers closed around a familiar shape. I glanced at my watch, it was just after 2am.
I took the Trophy Photo and, as it was such a pleasant night, carried on detecting on spec.
Until the novelty of can tabs wore off.
I waited until a reasonable hour before messaging Mary, unfortunately she didn’t see it before I had to head back south.
About a week later we were able to meet up and I could hand her husbands ring back.
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