South Australia Archives - Adelaide Lost Ring Search

13/01/201715/01/2017

Finding Zsófia’s ring at Henley Beach

I was just settling into a quiet evening at home last night when Henley Beach Surf Club phoned around 7.30 asking if I could possibly help a couple near the jetty.
Turned out Zsófia had lost her ring 20 or 30 metres out in chest high water and was very concerned about the bad weather due later.
I grabbed some water proof detecting gear and headed down there to see if I could help.
Once I finally got down to Henley from Hillcrest I found Zsófia and headed out to where her husband Danka was trying to dive down and find the ring, dropped a marker in the water at roughly where they thought the ring was and started work.
I searched about 15m north/ south and about the same east/ west but unfortunately didn’t find the ring before nightfall. The tides looked fairly good for Friday afternoon so I suggested I head back there around midday and try again with the ring possibly out of the water or maybe just in shallow water.

So today I headed back to Henley Beach about 40 minutes before low tide and worked the area again which was in shallow water and worked back up the beach a bit into only shin deep water when I was rewarded with a loud (so shallow) mid tone (where I would expect gold to be) and was able to just lean down and pull the ring out from about 2″ under the sand. I was only searching for 15 minutes or so after sticking a plastic bag over my dry non-waterproof gear in some serious rain.
I wasn’t sure it was the right ring so sent a pic to Zsófia and received an elated and relieved phone call back 🙂 It has now been picked up and is back where it belongs 🙂

Sophia's Wedding RIng — Sophia’s ring back with her

Ring and metal detector — Sophia’s ring and the Minelab Sovereign GT

Sophia's ring and the Coiltek WOT used to find it — Sophia’s ring and the Coiltek WOT used to find it

Gear used was a Tesoro Sand Shark last night in the water and the Sovereign GT and big coil today.

10/01/2017

Finding David’s lost white gold wedding ring

On Christmas Eve Alicia and David walked to a local soccer pitch enjoying some nice Adelaide summer weather. At some stage during the walk David lost his white gold wedding ring and they were unable to find it. A few days later Alica contacted me via facebook and we worked out a time to catch up for a search that evening.

We met up at the Athelstone Soccer Oval and had a chat to work out where the ring could be and I went to work checking the larger areas with a Minelab Sovereign GT, then changing to a Tesoro Tejon near some fencing and finally an old tesoro I keep around with a 4″ hockey puck coil to get right next to metal objects like the fence and playground equipment at the park.

I searched some parts of the oval, then the playground but unfortunately I failed to find it during the 1hr we had and headed home after mentioning that I would probably come back one day to try again.

During the week I asked Alicia if David could draw me a bit of a map in case I went back so I could narrow down the search area a bit and this came back.

The following day I decided to go back with this new information to try again. I searched the oval first with 3 passes up and down the path he probably walked, lots of checking at the gates and fence and then after no success I headed to the playground

I swapped the Sovereign GT for a Tesoro in the playground and searched in and out of the playground equipment and around the edge until I finally found it snug up against a metal pole. Not being completely sure it was the right one I send a message to Alicia and kept searching for about another 20 minutes until I had exhausted what I could in the playground and went home.

It turned out it was the right ring so Alicia and David met up with me again and it is now where it belongs.

01/01/2017

Happy new year and a white gold ring trifecta

Happy New Year everyone and best wishes for a loss free 2017.

2016 ended a little disappointingly for me with a search for 3 rings on Friday at Somerton Park. Unfortunately the rings probably ended up somewhere in the surf zone a few days after that big storm stripped sand from the beach. The combination of pounding waves and the beach re-filling with sand after the storm meant that the rings were going to be deep and difficult to track down.

After learning a bit about how they were lost I methodically checked a roughly tennis court sized area gridding north/ south and east/ west. After a couple of hours I picked up a whisper of a signal near the water and dug out one ring at around 12″ deep. So 1/3 and pushing towards impossibly deep.

After another hour I gave up, having not received any worthwhile signals. We had a chat about the best way forward and decided to leave it for some better weather and/ or less sand and headed home.

Saturday was another adventure trying to find a new Apple watch lost in the Murray. After about 10′ deep the water was pitch black and after only about 20 minutes dive time I pulled the pin on the search as too dangerous, too small chance of success and the location a little too ambiguous given the conditions. Signals were everywhere with all the fishing sinkers, metal rubbish etc next to a boat ramp so I had to manually check each signal by hand at up to 15′ in sightless conditions. Just too hard.

So, today I received a call from Tony that the sand/ weather back at Somerton Park was more favourable and it might be worth catching up again for another look. I tuned the Minelab Sovereign GT with every possible setting to get a little extra depth and searched extremely slowly near where the first ring was found. Ring pull, ring pull, … and so on then the slightest change in threshold (background hum) on the detector, not a beep, just a tiny change of note. I decided to dig it and pulled the wedding band out from somewhere around 14″ down- crazy. So 2/2 rings.

Having found the 2 rings now reasonably close to each other I doubled down and did what I could to drag every bit of performance out of the detector and myself. Eventually I nearly missed an even slighter signal, not even a whisper, just a hint of a nulling of the tone. I normally would not have dug this signal but did this time due to it being fairly close to where I found the second ring. Dig, dig, dig, dig … 10″, 11, 12, 13, somewhere near 15″. I kept losing that tiny signal and re-finding it. Eventually I scooped up that 3rd ring at a ridiculous depth thanks to the incredible Sov GT and 15″ Coiltek Manufacturing WOT coil.

I have a feeling the ring owners had given up on them a bit so I couldn’t be happier to return those 3 rings back to Kim. A real challenge pushing machine and me to absolute limits with a lot of luck and the sea/ weather cutting me a bit of slack. Great feeling.

white gold rings — Kim’s rings back where they belong