Long Beach Tag | The Ring Finders

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Jess was swimming at Paihia, in Northland, NZ when she felt the large silver ring slip off her finger.Her boyfriend tracked me down via a web search and I arranged to meet them at the next low tide.
The beach had largely emptied after the New Year holiday-makers so I was able to run a comprehensive grid without hindrance of sunbathers/swimmers or inquisitive children.
As the search area started to open up from their ‘Lost here’ best guess, and with the pouch slowly filling with metallic chaff and the occassional toy car I started to consider other options and second guess myself.

Had it been picked up by an eagle-eyed passer by as the tide dropped? Had I missed it with one slightly lazy swipe of the coil?
Despite these niggles, I stuck to the grid and started out into the water. It had started raining, so I was already wet and with the beach being actively dragged down by the ebbing waves I needed to work this area as best I could before the shells etc buried it if it was out there.

After about three or four passes out to the edge of the actively mobile sand, I got a faint silver tone. Wave surge made it difficult to accurately fix the position, and it was still in the hole after the first scoopful came out. I briefly glimpsed it as it settled in the slurry of shell and sand. This is where you can lose a ring down deep if not careful.  The scoop went in again, well under the ring and heaved the contents out. Hole checked and clear. I had it.

Jess and Johnny were already making their way down the beach towards me as I held the ring up… And the sun started to come out.

John was out swimming off Long Beach at Russell in the Bay of Islands, and realising he’d forgotten to leave his gold wedding band behind took it off and dropped it inside his wetsuit for security.  All went to plan, until, at the end of his swim and while wading ashore he unzipped the wetsuit and folded it down.  The inevitable happened, however it wasn’t until he was back at the car and out of the wetsuit he remembered the now absent ring.

He spent some time looking for his treasured gold ring in the grass in the carpark and retraced his steps up and down the beach without luck.

I came into the story three days later and made the journey over to hopefully reunite John with his lost ring.

John was up to getting wet again, so I asked him to take one of my marker floats out and drop it at his best guess for the start point.

Starting initially with a spiral search pattern in the immediate area out to 5m, I then ran parallel sweeps back into the beach in the direction of his travel back to the car – pausing to brace into the occasional larger breaking waves.

Once in the shallows, I took a short break to remove the wetsuit and switch to dry gear for the remainder of the beach, continuing the overlapping parallel sweeps back to the car – With no luck.

I always aim to run at 90-95% probability of detection, and the fact I hadn’t found it irritated me. I explained to John that the chances of missing it were slim, so there was a possibility it had fallen out on the hard sand or grass and been picked up. The search corridor marked out allowed for plenty of space either side of his track, so I was confident it wasn’t there.

John accepted the loss, we shook hands and he headed on his way home.

After packing the gear away, I grabbed a coffee from the nearby vendor and sat in the car looking at the beach with the search grid in the sand… I wasn’t happy about something, but couldn’t pin it down.  I needed to have another go on the “Assume Nothing, Believe No-One and Confirm Everything” principle.

What if John hadn’t come in on the direct line he thought he had?  Watching the swimmers and kids splashing around for a few minutes, I saw there was a subtle longshore drift dragging them along the beach. I decided to go back in and extend the search corridor.

Didn’t bother with the wetsuit this time, just grabbed the scoop and detector and headed back to the edge of the previous search area and started adding another 10m to it in the direction of the current.

After maybe 15 minutes, I got that solid gold ‘thud’ in the phones, and the scoop picked it up first time.

I headed back to the car and not having Johns number, phoned his wife to give the good news and ask her to get John to turn around and come back.  He was a very happy chap when I dropped the ring in his hand.