Definitely good of you to try. Reading this post brings back some memories for me. I actually have 3 lost wedding ring stories; all from back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I worked in the diving industry in Key Largo.
Somewhere around 1989 I was helping manage a dive shop in Key Largo. One of our instructors came in one day and told me she had lost her ring in the canal behind her house. I had a Fisher Research u/w detector and figured I could find it as long as she was certain of the loss area. I dove that canal 4 or 5 times, over an hour each time and never did find it.
A few months later, I was working the shop one day when a tourist came in asking if we rented detectors. We didn't of course but I got to talking to him and he said that his wife had lost her ring swimming off the beach behind their hotel. He had only a general idea, 100 square yards or so, where it might be. When I told him I owned an underwater detector he offered me a large sum of money to use it for the day. I thought about and finally told him I'd let him use it for a much smaller amount than he had offered if he left me his drivers license for collateral. He agreed of course.
I spent about a half hour showing him how to use the unit and off he went. I didn't think much of his chances, actually didn't think he had any chance at all. Lo and behold though, he was back in about an hour. He found the ring.
The last one happened a few years later. At this point I was a dive boat captain, still in Key Largo but with a different shop now. On this particular day we had run a bunch of divers and snorkelers out to a local wreck, the Benwood. The day was beautiful, calm seas, bright sun and one of those rare days when water visibility on the Benwood site was excellent. Everything was going great, divers had been in the water about an hour when a young couple who had been snorkeling came back to the boat. They were both visibly upset, the woman was crying.
I came down off the bridge to see what was going on and found out that they were on their honeymoon and that the wife's ring had slipped off her finger while they were floating over the wreck. She noticed it fairly quickly and they had been looking for a while with no luck. They had no idea where and, as the Benwood is a large and scattered site I honestly told them the chances of finding it were slim to none. Soon the rest of the group would be returning and we would have to move on to the second site of the trip. I felt really badly for them so I decided I would jump in and take a quick spin around the site and hope I would get lucky.
I grabbed my mask and fins and jumped in. The water directly under the boat was about 25 feet deep. We were moored off the starboard side of the wreck and I knew everyone would have followed basically the same path to reach the wreck. I grabbed a breath, swam down to a couple feet off the bottom and started swimming towards the wreck. I hadn't been under for more than a minute when I spotted a glint on the sand. Sure enough, right there on top of the sand was a big beautiful ring.
They were pretty happy to get it back, ecstatic even.I figured I'd get a big tip at the end of the trip. Nope, not a dime but I felt good about it for quite a while. Still do today when I remember it.
Thanks for bringing back these memories for me!
Tom
,,HH
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