Lost ring at Pacific Beach found.
Demian and his wife were visiting here and had a day at Pacific Beach. Demian like to surf and after riding a wave, grabbed his board in thigh deep water, when IT happened. Yup, his ring slipped right off and into the surf. When I received the call for help the next day, we talked about the loss to determine time, tide, location, water depth, etc. The tides were not going to be in our favor for a surf hunt, so, the search had to be delayed until a good minus tide coming up many days later. Not an ideal situation, as I like to jump on them right away, but, attempting deep water hunts in the surf are usually just a waste of time. It’s just too hard to keep a decent grid pattern going without leaving gaps with the waves pushing you around. Demian sent me a Google map with the approximate area he was surfing and the likely spot where the ring came off, as they had to leave town and go home.
Anyway, fast forward 11 days and a nice -0.9 tide on Father’s Day, I hit the beach at 2:30am to take as much advantage of the lower water level as possible. I started a grid parallel to the water’s edge and work my way out with the lowering tide. An hour later without so much as one target, I was beginning to wonder if someone had already been there and done a thorough search of the area. A nice solid 12 rang in my ears from the Equinox and sure enough, it was Demian’s ring! That’s the ratio of trash to treasure I like to see! I texted Demian and later that morning I got the happy return text. We arranged to meet the next day for the ring reunion. A pleasure meeting to two, and thank you for the generous reward.
I received an email from Omar stating, « I just realized this morning that I lost my wedding ring. It probably happened at Toronita Beach yesterday evening. The tide was high and I was boogie boarding. Please call me if you think there is a chance that you can find it. » It was close to midnight when I read Omar’s plea for help and I answered immediately wanting to encourage and instill some hope. I always start by asking some very pertinent questions like…What time of the day were you in the water? Did you feel your ring come off? How large of an area did you swim in and how long were you in the water? How deep was the water where you were boogie boarding and how far out did you go? Thankfully Omar responded early the next morning and gave very descriptive answers to all my questions regarding the how, when and where! And one key piece of information about their boogie boarding was he and his daughters were trying to see how far they could ride the waves all the way to the wet sand. With that knowledge and the fact they were in the water at « high tide » put the target area in a much easier part of the beach to metal detect, especially at low tide!
Amy emailed me to see if I could help locate her husband Matt’s custom made white gold wedding band, which was lost as he swam in front of their Hopkins Pond Camp, in Clifton, Maine. Despite very clear water and minimal bottom silt, the search area was challenging due to being strewn with rocks and boulders. Upon exhausting my first tank of air, I began to fear the ring may have slipped into one of the many deep crevices and out of detector range. Shortly after starting my second dive, my Minelab Equinox 600 located the ring in 9 feet of water, buried in a thin layer of silt. A portion of the generous reward received will be donated to The Landing Place in Rockland, Maine to help their efforts to combat homelessness of local teens and young adults.
I was contacted last night by Andrew who had lost his gold signet ring whilst mucking about with his mates on a riverbank , arranged to meet this afternoon, and after a stroll through water meadows we arrived at the riverbank the ring was lost on , my Equinox 800 soon hit on a steady repeatable 17 , a quick fingertip search and there was Andrews lost signet ring , who was amazed at the speedy recovery, as he was pretty certain the ring had come off in the water after been dragged into the river by his mates .
