I had been made aware of a surfer who lost his ring through social media and contacted him. He had gone out to go surfing and realized that he forgot to remove his 18K gold wedding band. He surfed a wave in to remove the ring and put it in his key pouch on his wetsuit. As he was trying to put it in his pouch in ankle deep water, he fumbled the ring as a small wave came in and the ring was gone. After contacting the guy I realized we had a problem: the ring was lost at Drakes Beach in Northern California, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a National Park. This is the highly debated area where Sir Francis Drake landed in 1579 to claim the new land for England. We were successful in obtaining permission from the NPS to use metal detectors to look for the guy's ring.
I brought my friend Jim Wirth along to search for the ring at low tide. In less than 30 minutes Jim had found the ring with his CTX 3030 as we were gridding out the area. Since the day was young, Jim and I headed to a second beach that was not part of the GGNRA. The karma gods must have been smiling as I found this nice 14K gold wedding band with 8 small diamonds. Jim and I both found silver rings and I also scored a 1907 Indian Head cent and a 1943 war nickel!
Happy Hunting!
Larry – California, USA
