lost ring whitfords beach Tag | The Ring Finders

I may not have a beard but.. Merry Xmas Nikki, Ringfinders Style!

  • from Perth (Australia)
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What an extraordinary day! After a relatively poor afternoons detecting in the water at one of Perths most popular beaches I returned to my ute and now in a towel threw my wetsuit in the back. I was thinking I must check my phone to see if I had any messages when I turned to see a man on the road and a bike in the air! I rushed down the road (in a towel) to find the man had gone over the handle bars when a car had left the curb in front of him. He was not at all comfortable and may have broken his shoulder besides a serious dose of gravel rash. Luckily a lifegaurd was not far away and was able to take over as while this was going on I’d left my metal detector sitting on the back of my ute. The

Great work Niki! This made it all possible.

ambos duly arrived and it was now that I got in the car and checked my phone. I noticed there was a message from Niki regarding two lost rings. I called her straight away and found the message had been left 3 days before!  She had lost her diamond and platinum wedding set in the water at Whitfords beach whilst on holiday here. From England she now lives in Malaysia but was currently in Melbourne!

As usual the weather forecast was getting worse again over the next few days so being christmas day and only being 20 mins drive I thought it best to have a go asap. I asked Niki if she could send a google earth placemark of where she thought she’d lost the ring and photos of the rings I was looking for while I drove straight to Whitfords beach.

That would be one of em!

After seeing the rings and the location on my phone, and much to the astonishment of the last beach goers, I ran down to the waters edge just as the sun was setting, gouged a start line in the sand with my foot and started searching at some pace into and out of the water, in out, in out, in pulltab, out tent peg, in platinum diamond wedding band, BIG yehaaaa!

I was so excited I almost forgot theres another ring that should be around here somewhere. A few more sweeps of my coil and there it was, another super soft signal (platinum can be very hard to detect).

And that would be its brother!

I peered into my sandscoop and sure enough, there was Niki’s lovely diamond engagement ring, sparkling in my headlights beam!

I called Niki to tell her the wonderful news and when she answered and asked how I was, I was all of a sudden speachless, then I simply said ‘merry christmas Niki!’

I guess it was 11 pm or so in Melbourne when I called, and so it would seem that santa left his very best for last this year…

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“Yep, RingFinding Is An Actual Thing, How Can I Help?”, Scarborough Beach, Western Australia

  • from Perth (Australia)
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“Yep, ringfinding is an actual thing, how can I help!” was my reply when I got a call from Brett who’d lost his white gold wedding band in the water whilst at the dog beach this morning. He’d been poking around on google when he found ‘TheRingFinders.com’ and then me. He said he was surprised to find such a service existed, and in Western Australia.

After telling me what had happened, I checked the weather conditions and realised I needed to attempt a recovery asap as the wind, swell and tides were getting worse and it may be a week before better conditions for a search in the water might arrive.

Happy happy happy joy joy joy!

I asked if Brett could meet me at the beach in 40 mins to show me where he felt he had been in the water.

After meeting at the carpark I asked him to go to the beach ahead of me while I ‘suited up’, and place a ‘witches hat’ (road safety cone) as close as possible to where he felt he’d lost the ring. Brett had explained they had made some sandcastles in the morning so we could easily find where they had been.

When I got to the beach my heart sank a little as first I realised the sea had washed away the sandcastles (making locating the search area all the more difficult) and secondly the sea conditions did not look at all good for a wading search and in fact shortly after starting the search Brett and I could not move forward against the strong undertow which was also folding my detectors coil back against the shaft!

A bit depressed about the situation I left the water and asked Brett if there was any chance he might have lost it on the beach? He said he felt strongly that he had lost it in the water but could not be sure so I placed a ‘witches hat’ about 5 m either side of the one he had placed and began searching the beach. The first half of the search area produced only one target, you guessed it, a bottle cap! Now normally beer bottle caps are the bane of all metal detectorists (our beaches, parks and roadsides are literally loaded with these and aluminium pull tabs) but in this case when I showed Brett he remembered having seen it whilst mucking around that morning so we knew we were very close to where he had been. This certainly raised my hopes and mood!

As I approached the waves when I started searching the other half of the search area I got a great signal and thought, surely this is it..

As I retrieved the target I could not believe what I was seeing, I had just found a thick gold chain just a few inches down in the sand! On closer inspection we found it was ‘gold plated’ and since we were on a dog exercise beach I figure it was lost by a dog, not a human! (Anyway unless a dog calls to claim it, my dog Dylan now has some ‘lucky’ bling to wear for special occassions such as future ring finding assignments!)

Resuming the search I made another pass up and back and right at the waters edge got another solid signal from my metal detector. Feeling in the sand I felt the unmistakeable shape of a ring and exposing it from the sand, looked up to Brett and said “would this be your ring?”.

Well you can imagine the relief we all felt when Brett began to smile from ear to ear and said “yep, thats definately it”. And so ended the search for another ‘lost smile’. Kudos to Brett for finding near enough, the exact spot where he and his family had been. In the end the ring was within a few meters of the cone he had placed on the beach and I must have been very close to standing on it as I walked down to search the water when we first arrived!

It is always so rewarding to reunite people with their sentimental items, and this one was no exception, I can’t wait for that next call…

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