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Fortress 4210Home \ Fortresses \ April 2000 \ 4210
Location: Bellows Beach |
Friday, April 21, 2000
The tide charts revealed that low tide was about 10:00 am, so I figured I'd
get to Bellows around noon, right when it opened for the weekend, build a good
distance from the tide, then let it come in and flood the fortress. This was my
old system of timing the tides.
Although the original intake filters I had been using worked, they were not very sturdy and I needed to replace them. So earlier in the week, I made some new intake filters with strong springs for support, and I was looking forward to testing them out. I also brought a squirt bottle with the idea of spraying the fortress to keep it moist, learning from the negative effects of the sun on April 16th, and a little brush to sweep away residual sand. While the new model of intake filters worked great, and are in fact what I still use today, I ditched the squirt bottle because it was just not necessary, and the little brush because it smoothed out the nice sharp edges. (Now I just blow residual sand out of the way.)
It was a fairly hot and sunny day, but the construction of SF4120 was a disaster. I built too close to the tide and didn't have enough time to build much before the waves beat the hell out of the front of the fortress. I spent more time conducting damage control measures of piling sand in front of the fortress than I did actually carving it, and all in a futile effort against the tide, which was coming in hard and heavy that day. I eventually just had to abandon the fortress altogether, but managed to get one picture of a surviving tower.
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