Lost gold ring on Disappearing Island, New Smyrna Beach, Fl.....Found and Returned!

Alicia was enjoying a relaxing day at Disappearing Island with friends and as she was swimming she somehow felt her small gold ring come off of her pinky finger. She tried grabbing it as it fell thru the water but to her horror it vanished in the soft sand at her feet. She desperately tried feeling in the sand, running her fingers back and forth but her precious ring just seemed to disappear!

This small gold ring was very special to Alicia as it was a gift to her when she was 12 years old from her mother and she has worn that ring every day for the last 23 years, until now. The location where she lost the ring was on Disappearing Island at Ponce Inlet in north New Smyrna Beach. And it is a very popular place for the boaters to park and enjoy the calmer waters and especially at low tide. During high tide the island is quite small but during low tide there is plenty of area for boats to park and especially on weekends the island is lined with boats of all sizes.

I made plans to meet Alicia at the Smyrna Dunes Park and we each brought our own kayak and with my Whites TDI Beach Hunter metal detector, scoop and other essential gear we set out across the busy inlet water way. It took a bit of figuring as Alicia texted her friends and had them each send a pin on a google map photo of where they had anchored the boat and where they would have been swimming the day she lost her ring. Alicia was worried about me being able to find her lost ring but I assured her that if she could put me in the general area where she was swimming then there was a good chance of actually finding her lost ring. So we pulled our kayaks up onto the beach in the 95 degree heat and I set about my grid search going from the wet sand and out into the water and back again, dragging one foot to mark my trail so I could actually overlap each pass so as not to miss one inch of sand. (The day she lost her ring she was in waist deep water at high tide and today we were there just before low tide so my target area was the wet sand out to knee deep water.) After an hour and a half and only digging up bottle caps, pull tabs and other miscellaneous junk I was needing a water break and while talking to Alicia we determined I had gone far enough on the one end of the beach and now I needed to go in the other direction. Alicia was feeling a bit useless and asked me several times what she could do to help me in the search. She offered to cover each hole I dug and tried to assist in finding the hidden target after I would dig a scoop of sand and dump it on the ground. After a while I tried to encourage her that the best thing she could do was “Pray” as I assured her that God knew exactly where her ring was hiding and that He would just need to get me over the top of it with my coil for us to find it. It truly is a matter of inches, as Chris Turner always says, and finally there in ankle deep water I got a faint signal and as the sand drained out of my scoop I could see a small gold ring nestled in the bottom. I motioned for Alicia to come over and look at what I just found and I will never forget the look on her face! The joy and relief and happiness all mixed in with thankfulness!

Lost something? Call, text or email me ASAP!