james river lost ring Tag | The Ring Finders

Rob Ellis: Ring Recovery Specialist…Call or text 703-598-1435

September 9^th, 2020: A couple of days ago, Zach was tubing with his wife and sister in-law when his ring was lost. When he realized the ring was dropped, Zach carefully took note of where their party was located using the Huguenot bridge, some logs, and a boulder he could stand on. With rain in the forecast, we decided to meet as early as possible the next day to conduct the search.

When I met Zach, I was very impressed with how well he had observed the location of the ring drop. He drew a very good map with a circle illustrating the location in which he thought the ring landed. It turns out Zach is an Advanced SCUBA diver, and a mechanical engineer. His education really paid off. As I did recover the ring from within that area!!

Zach is a strong swimmer and offered to tow out some of my equipment. He found the boulder and I set an anchor for a modified jack-stay search. The visibility was poor and there was a moderate current. The depth near the bridge varies from 3 to 10 feet. Luckily the search area was about 5 feet deep. I made the first half circle sweep and moved the anchor 15 feet down river. The skies were getting darker and it started to rain. Time was short. I was concerned about safety because of rising water and an increasing current. I was a little more than half way through the second pattern when I heard my Excalibur make that tone indicating platinum! Once I knew where to look, I could see the ring sitting on the bottom. I was so happy to pick it up and hand it to Zach. The look on his face was priceless!

It was fortunate we decided to search sooner rather than later. With the rain, the current was increasing and it would take days to slow back to normal. Zach and I both had that goose-bump feeling that “it was meant to be”!