Found 22k Yellow Sapphire Ring on Davenport Beach
A couple of evenings ago fellow ring finder and metal detector expert Tom Tanner contacted me asking if I could get to a lost ring on a beach in Davenport, California. Davenport is about 25 minutes away from my house, and the gentleman who lost the ring was able to find Tom through the ring finders network for assistance. Indu had lost his ring a week earlier and I knew there would be a strong chance that through several tide cycles the ring had moved, had possibly been driven deep into the sand, or had even been found already.
After several emails during a busy day at work I agreed to meet the unfortunate gentleman Indu. We agreed to meet at the beach at 8:00 am this morning. As soon as Indu arrived he saw where he was standing when he lost his ring and how much the landscape had changed since he lost it, but we resolved to maintain hope and start the search.
Given that he had almost an exact location of where he lost the ring I decided to take this as “ground zero” and start a spiral pattern around this point, with Indu suggesting possible motion of where the ring could have travelled given the wave action on the day that he was there. After about an hour and extensively searching in the most likely area around the ring, I told Indu that I was not very hopeful that we could find his ring and that if he had any other suggestions I was up for trying them. He suggested one or two other spots and then as I was informing him that I thought our chances were very slim I also added that I would search in the nooks of the rocks that were located laterally along the beach from where he lost his ring. I got about 50′ away from ground zero and got a great signal which, after just simply moving a bit of sand off, turned out to be Indu’s ring… a beautiful 22k gold ring with yellow sapphire.
As I told Indu that I had some good news for him we were both stunned and thrilled that we were able to find it in a surprisingly distant location from where he lost it. Mother nature has a way of rapidly moving things on the beach and this hunt was a great example.
