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On August 3rd, my phone started blowing up. Facebook notifications were pouring in, tag after tag, mentioning me on a local Poland, Maine community board post.
The Poland, Maine community was trying to connect me with a man named Matt. Matt had posted a heartfelt plea to the group: he had recently lost his titanium wedding ring at Tripp Lake Beach, and he was desperately hoping a Good Samaritan might spot it and let him know.
When Matt called me, the true scale of the mission became clear.
About two weeks earlier, Matt had been enjoying a beautiful, sunny day with family and friends at Tripp Lake Beach, taking advantage of the scorching summer heat by cooling off in the water. But fresh water has a way of shrinking fingers fast! ?
Matt had spent his day wading across the entire length of the public beachโa stretch easily 300 feet long. Even worse, he had been swimming up to 50 or 60 feet out from the shoreline.
When you do the math, that meant the ring was resting somewhere inside a massive 15,000 to 18,000 square foot grid of dark lake water. By any measure, this was an incredibly massive underwater search area, and the clock had already been ticking for two weeks…
To make matters even more daunting, Matt dropped another bombshell: he had already tried searching the water with a borrowed metal detector. Not only that, but two other people had also brought their detectors down to the beach to scan the area.
All three attempts came up completely empty. ?
Honestly, looking at the sheer size of Tripp Lake Beach, it was no wonder. Dragging consumer gear through a massive underwater grid without a highly systematic search pattern is almost impossible.
When Matt asked if we could help, I took a hard look at the calendar. My schedule was completely packed. I was fully booked for recoveries on both August 4th and August 5th. But we don’t like giving up on a ring, especially when the community rallies to find us!
Our August 5th hunt was a critical, time-sensitive low-tide search down in Ogunquit, scheduled for very early in the morning. Gary Hill and I looked at the map and made a plan. The second we wrapped up the coastal ocean hunt in Ogunquit, Maine: Beautiful Place by the Sea t, we would pack up the Ring Finder Mobile and make the 1.5-hour drive inland to Poland, Maine . Two completely different bodies of water, two completely different environments, all in a single day. ??
Once Gary and I arrived at the lake and finally met Matt in person, he walked us right down to the water’s edge. I took one long look at the sheer, overwhelming size of that beach and a thought immediately popped into my head: “There is absolutely no way we are finding his ring today.”
The area was just too massive. Looking out at that water, I knew that anyone just walking around aimlessly hadโas Matt accurately put it in his original Facebook postโa total “one-in-a-billion shot.” In my mind, I was already calculating the logistics. I figured Gary and I were going to need at least 4 or 5 full days of a highly disciplined, hyper-systematic grid search to clear this place safely.
But we didn’t drive 1.5 hours to stand on the shore and doubt ourselves. It was time to get to work! โ๏ธ
I turned to Matt and laid out the battle plan. We would use a prominent, large rock breaking the surface of the water as our deep outer boundary, as Matt confirmed he hadnโt gone out past that depth.
To keep our grid lines perfectly straight and ensure we didn’t miss a single inch of the lakebed, we utilized the rocks along the shoreline as our landmark anchors. Gary would start right where we were at the north end of the beach, working his way from the edge of the water out to the deep boundary and back, systematically grid-searching his way south toward a specific rock landmark on the shore.
Meanwhile, I walked further down the beach to that exact same shore rockโthe one Gary would eventually stop at. That was my starting point. From there, I would work my grid lines from the shoreline out, systematically heading further south toward another visual lockup landmark on the beach.
As for Matt, he walked even further down the beach past my zone to start his own search, heading south to tackle the far end of the grid.
We dropped our coils into the water, tuned out the world, and began swinging… ??
Gary and I found the entire beach absolutely beautiful. The water was remarkably warm for an inland Maine lake, and as we got our rhythm down, we noticed something highly unusual: the targets were incredibly few and far between.
It was a very, very clean beach. Because we werenโt stopping to dig up the usual heavy layer of buried pull-tabs, bottle caps, and shredded aluminum foil, our search progress was moving significantly faster than I had originally anticipated. Since we weren’t digging many targets, we were moving right along, slicing through those 15,000 square feet with smooth, uninterrupted swings.
A fascinating thought crossed my mind as I looked over at Gary:
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When inexperienced hunters or people with borrowed, basic machines go looking for a lost item, they usually dig up every single faint beep or scratchy iron signal they can find in a desperate attempt to find the ring. By doing that, they often inadvertently do the heavy lifting for usโstripping away all the shallow metallic “trash” and clearing the path.
Because they had unknowingly cleaned out the background noise, our advanced, high-discrimination machines could scan the lakebed completely unhindered. If that titanium wedding band was down there, there was no longer any junk left to hide it. It was going to scream the second our coils passed over it.
As we proceeded south along the lakebed, almost an hour had passed. The quiet hum of the machines was hypnotic, and I was already mentally mapping out the next major sections for Gary and me to search on the following days, fully expecting this to be a multi-day operation.
Then, out of nowhere…
????!!! ?
My headphones lit up with the absolute best-sounding target of the entire day so far on the Minelab Excalibur II. It was a beautiful, solid tone that broke the lake’s silence.
I stopped dead in my tracks and yelled over to Gary, “This is a really good sounding target!”
I positioned my scoop and dug down into the lakebed. My first scoop came upโnothing but empty sand. The target was still in the hole.
I lined up the coil again, pushed the scoop down deeper into the sand, and lifted. As the second scoop broke the surface of the water, the lake sand began to rapidly sift through the drainage holes. All of a sudden, right there in the bottom of the scoop, I saw the ring! ??
Gary was now walking over to me and he reached into my scoop and grabbed the ring. We both looked at it, completely stunned that the “one-in-a-billion shot” had just paid off in under an hour!
I turned toward the southern end of the beach and yelled down as loud as I could: “????! ???????????????!” ?
The distance between us was so immense that my voice had to travel clear across the water. Matt froze in his tracks. He was so far down the beach that his response barely carried back to usโjust a very faint, disbelieving… “???’?? ??????? ??.” ?
As Matt hurriedly waded back through the water toward us, Gary and I were just beaming. We couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces. We just couldn’t believe our good fortune. Better to be lucky than good, as the old saying goes, and we certainly got lucky by being in the exact right spot at the exact right time today.
The moment Matt reached us, pure relief washed over his entire face. You could visually see the heavy stress of being without his wedding ring completely leave his body. He could finally breathe and relax again.
But even in that moment of relief, Matt wasnโt thinking about himself. His thoughts went straight to his wife.
As the three of us began walking out of the water together, I turned to him and said, “?’? ???? ?? ????? ??? ??? ?? ????.”
Matt looked at the ring, then back at us, and replied: “??? ???? ?? ???? ??? ????? ?? ???? ???? ??.” โค๏ธ
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Just as the three of us stepped foot onto dry land, my phone started ringing. It was another panicked call about a lost ringโthis time dropped into Crystal Lake in Gray, Maine , which was only about 7 miles down the road and directly on our way home!
I hung up, looked at my partner, and smiled: “Gary, pack up the Ring Finder Mobile… another lost ring awaits!” ??
Moments like this remind us why we do what we do. We truly have the best job in the world, and we love every single second of it!
โ ๏ธ LOST SOMETHING PRECIOUS IN THE SAND OR WATER? โ ๏ธ
Time is absolutely of the essence! Shifting tides, moving sand, lake currents, and crowded beaches mean the longer you wait, the harder it gets to find. Don’t waste critical hours trying to locate a DIY metal detector rentalโcall the professionals immediately!
? CALL OR TEXT US ASAP: 207-423-3027
We service beaches, lakes, yards, and parks all across Maine. Share this post to spread the wordโyou never know whose wedding ring you might help save next! ??
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