Wellingtons bay Tag | The Ring Finders

Jess contacted me with an urgent request. She had flown in from Australia to attend a friend’s wedding in Tutukaka, and during the evening, she lost her valuable engagement ring.

They had checked the bins in the bathrooms, the car interior, and various other areas of the venue where the ring could have been lost, but to no avail.

Someone recommended they contact me, especially since they were leaving Tutukaka the next day to head back to Australia.

I arrived first thing the next morning and went through the « 20 Questions » to identify areas of highest probability. I agreed with their reasoning that the parking paddock was a very high-probability location for the loss. Jess pointed out the area where their car had been parked, and I started the grid search, beginning wide to ensure the surrounding area was also cleared.

A couple of minutes later, I found a beautiful diamond engagement ring. The two-tone gold/platinum band was perfectly camouflaged against the dried grass cuttings. You could have looked directly at it and not seen it.

I held it up to show Jess, and her face lit up. 🙂

Job done, and another irreplaceable ring safely back on the finger.

Carol was swimming with her family at Whangaumu Bay (Wellingtons Bay) a week ago, play-fighting with her son in the water, when her treasured gold bangle of 15 years slipped off her wrist and sank into the sand at their feet.

However, she didn’t actually realise it had been lost until later in the day, long after leaving the beach.

With bad weather forecast, I started the search earlier than planned, progressively working deeper as I followed the breakers back and forth along the beach.

After some time—and a lot of can pull tabs—a good signal came through. Seconds later, I was looking at a beautiful solid gold bangle in the scoop. A little worse for wear after being scoured by sand for a week, but it was now safely secured.

A few days later, I met up with Carol and handed over her bangle. Surprisingly, it was, and apparently had always been, a tight fit to get on and off her wrist. So, how it slipped off is still a mystery, even allowing for the usual « ring-removal effects » of cold water.

During a recent lost ring recovery in the Tutukaka and Ngunguru area, I was made aware of a historical ring loss at Whangaumu Bay a week previously.
I contacted Kiri to see if I could assist in returning her husbands ring, lost on the beach…somewhere.

I was down in Whangarei a couple of days later, so made the detour and headed out to meet Reghan, Kiris husband, at Whangaumu – Just over a week had passed since loss on this very mobile beach. The sand is very light and moves readily with any swells.

Having the ring owner on site to answer questions about the loss always hugely increases the odds of being able to hand your lost ring back to you. Some of the questions I ask may seem strange, they all add pieces to the puzzle and slowly builds up a ‘hotspot’ of where the ring likely lays…and where it probably isn’t.
Very often the ring is not where the person thought it should be.

I started the initial search where they had been sitting on the beach, Reghan mentioned he had launched a kayak to go out fishing – the tides were wrong for a water search at this stage, so I focused on clearing the beach.

The initial high probability area drew a blank, so I started to extend the search – further and further.
Then I dug a fishing jig head. Not a common design and from the condition it was a recent loss. I asked Reghan if it was a style he used? « Yes, that’s one of mine ».

I now had a definite reference point. Reghan had walked past this spot! I could now use my Search & Rescue experience to reassign probabilities to different areas around me, and work out his route. His tracks were long since erased by weather and waves, but human behaviour is almost universal.

I changed the search pattern based on his likely path. Retracing his footsteps from eight days ago…

Just two search lines later, a heavy gold ring came to the surface. I was confused as to whether it was Reghans ring as there were no assay stamps. I then found out their matching rings had been handmade by an artist friend of theirs.  You could never replace that.

37 years experience in recovering lost rings and precious items gives me an exceptional recovery rate, and I just love handing back treasured things that have been dismissed as « Gone Forever ».