Rhode Island
Your engagement ring is somewhere on a Rhode Island beach you can name
Narragansett and Newport, Misquamicut and Watch Hill, Charlestown, Block Island, the parks inland.
Narragansett Town Beach has a North Pavilion and a South Pavilion. A building like that turns a vague memory into a patch somebody can work, and a ring lost between the two is a job with edges. The same ring with nothing to measure it against is a much longer day.
Ring Seekers is a lost ring and jewelry recovery service that connects people who lost a ring, wedding band, watch, keys or phone in Rhode Island with a metal detectorist who can search there. Tell us what happened and where. We find a detectorist who can reach the place, brief them with your map and photos, and tell you honestly if the odds are poor.
The hunt for a lost engagement ring goes the same way as one for a wedding band, an Oura ring, a watch, earrings, a bracelet, a phone, car keys, metal-framed glasses or a hearing aid.
Photograph the spot before anyone walks over it
Stay where you are for two more minutes. Take one picture out towards the water and one back at something that will not have moved by Friday, a pavilion, the boardwalk, a jetty. Drop a pin with your feet still in place. Then note the last hour you are sure it was on you, and if a wave was in it, how deep you were standing, in feet or metres.
All of that goes to us on WhatsApp, along with a photograph of the item itself. Working out which metal detectorist near me result reaches Misquamicut or Block Island is our side of it.
Areas and towns we cover in Rhode Island
- Narragansett
- Narragansett Town Beach
- Scarborough State Beach
- Roger Wheeler State Beach
- Salty Brine State Beach, Galilee
- Newport
- Easton's Beach and the Cliff Walk
- Brenton Point State Park
- Sachuest Point and Second Beach, Middletown
- Westerly
- Misquamicut State Beach
- Watch Hill and Napatree Point
- Charlestown
- Charlestown Town Beach and Blue Shutters
- East Beach and the Breachway
- Ninigret Park and Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge
- Trustom Pond, South Kingstown
- Block Island
- Fred Benson Town Beach and Old Harbor
- Providence
- Roger Williams Park
- India Point Park
- Coventry
- Johnson's Pond and Lake Tiogue
What each of these beaches is like underfoot
Tell us the name of the beach and we will work out the rest.
Narragansett's beaches do not all face the same water
Scarborough State Beach takes the open Atlantic and comes in a north and a south section. Roger Wheeler, sometimes still called Sand Hill Cove, is on Block Island Sound instead, gentle surf and a slight drop-off underfoot. Salty Brine is the small one in the fishing village of Galilee, where breakwaters and a gradual slope leave the water calm and shallow. At the town beach, the two pavilions give a searcher something to measure from.
Newport's First Beach is where the Cliff Walk starts
Easton's Beach, known locally as First Beach, lies on Memorial Boulevard at the start of the Cliff Walk: three quarters of a mile of sand, a boardwalk behind it and Atlantic surf in front. Which end of that you were nearer decides most of the search. Brenton Point State Park, out on Ocean Drive, is other ground altogether, sloping lawns above Narragansett Bay where the wind brings out kite flyers. In Middletown, Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge adjoins Second Beach, with loop trails of 1.1 and 1.5 miles (1.8 and 2.4 km) above a rocky shore.
The Westerly shore keeps going past Watch Hill
Misquamicut State Beach lies along Atlantic Avenue in Westerly, with the town's own Wuskenau Beach next to it. Further west are Watch Hill and its lighthouse, then Napatree Point, reaching out into Little Narragansett Bay. The coast carries on over the state line from there, and the Connecticut shore and Westerly page picks it up on the other side.
Charlestown has three miles of beach with almost nothing on it
East Beach gives the town that much shoreline with barely a building along it, which is the charm of it on the day and no help afterwards, since there is little to line yourself up against. Charlestown Town Beach, Blue Shutters Beach and Ninigret Park are the three the town runs itself, and they are easier ground to describe. Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge has over four miles (6.4 km) of trails, one of them a half-mile walk to Watchaug Pond, and Trustom Pond refuge in South Kingstown has three miles (5 km) of trails to viewing platforms over its pond.
One long white beach down the east coast of Block Island
Crescent Beach is that whole stretch, from Old Harbor, where the ferries dock, up to Clay Head, and it changes name as you walk it. Fred Benson Town Beach, once the State Beach and now the town's own, is the middle of it, with Surf Beach and Baby Beach to the south, Scotch Beach and Mansion Beach to the north. Saying which of those you were on saves an afternoon.
Away from the coast, the water is a pond or a park lake
Roger Williams Park in Providence has lakes through it, lawns around the Temple to Music and, at the Botanical Center, perennial gardens, a rose maze and a gazebo on the water. Providence has India Point Park as well. Inland at Coventry the water is Johnson's Pond, which the maps have as the Flat River Reservoir, and Lake Tiogue.
The part that happens at our end
Your message lands with one person
Bartek reads it, asks the questions and writes back himself. You are never handed on to somebody who wants the story again.
Your photographs are the briefing
Whoever goes out has seen the pin and the pictures first, so nobody spends the first half hour working out what you meant.
We will say when a spot is too vague
A whole beach and an afternoon, with a tide through it since, is a thin brief, and you will hear us say so before anybody arranges anything.
The questions change with the water
On the Sound side it is how far out you waded. At Scarborough it is the section and the state of the tide. On a park lawn it is what you were sitting next to.
You decide with the numbers in front of you
We explain the costs before any search is booked.
How much the water moves in Rhode Island
Low water opens only a narrow strip
The mean range of tide at the Newport station is about 3.5 feet, a little over a metre, on the published NOAA datums. So low water opens only a thin band of fresh sand.
The Sound beaches are the calm ones
Scarborough and Misquamicut take the open Atlantic, with surf in the bargain. Roger Wheeler and Salty Brine face Block Island Sound, where the water is calmer and the bottom falls away slowly. In the wash at an ocean beach a ring could work down into the sand rather than stay where it landed, so a message today is worth more than a tidy one next week.
Johnson's Pond has no tide to wait for
The Coventry water and the lakes through Roger Williams Park stay where they are, so the edge you waded in from is the edge you go back to. How far out you got and how deep it came are the two things to pin down.
What we would ask you about the spot
My engagement ring came off in the wet sand at Narragansett Town Beach this afternoon, somewhere between the two pavilions. Is that too much ground?
No, that is a patch somebody can work. Tell us which pavilion you were nearer, how far down towards the water you had walked, and whether the sand was dry or already wet. A photograph from where you stood beats describing it.
My husband's watch came off in the surf at Scarborough and we only noticed at the car. A search for metal detecting Rhode Island brought us to you. What happens next?
You send the beach, the section and the time, and we carry it from there. Scarborough comes in a north and a south section, so pin that down first, then how deep he was standing and what he was level with on shore. Moving water is its own kind of search.
My wedding band slipped off in the shallows at Crescent Beach on Block Island. Does being out on an island change how this works?
The search itself is no different from one on the mainland. We need the part of the beach, how far out you waded and the time, and we go looking for somebody who can get across. Crescent Beach covers most of the east coast under several names, so what you were level with counts for more than the name.
My phone went into the water at Salty Brine State Beach in Galilee while we were watching the boats. How bad is that?
Depth decides most of it. Behind those breakwaters the slope is gradual and the water stays shallow, so a phone that went in from the edge is a different proposition from one dropped off a boat. Send us where you were standing, how deep it came on you, and the time.
My ring came off on dry sand at Misquamicut about an hour ago. I could get hold of a metal detector rental by this evening. Do I try that myself first?
Go on, try. A loss this fresh, on dry sand, in a patch you can walk straight back to, is the one case where doing it yourself is a reasonable bet. Wet sand, water, a long stretch of beach or something as small as an earring wants a person with the right machine and the practice to swing it.
I lost my grandmother's bracelet on the grass at Roger Williams Park in Providence, near the Temple to Music. How do I narrow that down?
Work through what you did rather than where you have looked. Go back over the afternoon in order, the bench you sat on, the path towards the Botanical Center, the spot you stopped for a photograph, and mark each one. A short list of stops will do.
My car key fob is somewhere on the grass at Brenton Point, where we were flying kites, and it is not the kind you can cut a spare for. Now what?
Photograph the grass from where you were standing, with Ocean Drive or the water in the frame, and drop a pin before you leave. Then message us the time and the way you walked across it.
Rhode Island
Start with the beach and the hour
Two photographs and a dropped pin fill in the rest.
Say what is missing and where it went: a ring in the wet sand at Narragansett Town Beach, a watch in the surf at Scarborough, a key fob on the lawn at Brenton Point. We come back to you with what else is worth photographing and how we read the chances.