|
|
Fortress 4290Home \ Fortresses \ April 2000 \ 4290
Location: Lanikai Beach |
Saturday,
April 29, 2000
Fortress #7, designated SF4290, was constructed on Lanikai
Beach. Lisa and I wanted to go to the beach, and for a change, we went
to Lanikai. High tide was around 11:30 and it was about that time when we
left for the beach. Since the timing was bad, and because I didn't feel like
dragging along my buckets and piping equipment anyway, I took only my carving tools to
the beach. When we got there, we sat for awhile and I watched the tide for about 15 minutes to see where
it was generally leveling off. This would be the location for SF4290.
A few notes about Lanikai Beach: The waves at Lanikai are very calm. This made sand fortress construction much, much easier than at Bellows Beach, where the waves can be very strong. At Lanikai, when a big wave comes in, it comes in much gentler, and on a flatter slope. In theory, this should do a nice job of flooding without pounding the front of a fortress, and generally, this theory holds true. But as I said, there was no drainage system this time, just a nice fortress.
Additionally, about Lanikai Beach, the sand--it is among the finest granularity on the island. Bellows is good too, it's a toss-up really, but Lanikai is almost like flour. And it made for very nice sand cement. [Editor's Note: Since this writing, I have discovered that there is a layer of small shells near the water at low tide on Lanikai, which is bad for fortress construction, but the sand is still nice farther up the beach.]
I built a nice three tower mound of sand, all by hand, that is, without a bucket, with one of the towers rising to around four feet in height. That's what is nice about sand with very fine granularity: the ability to cement itself tightly, which allows for sturdier construction, which allow for taller towers.
It was very sunny, and many people were at the beach. Lanikai is a smaller, more personal beach, and so people are generally more friendly and talkative. I had many people stop and tell me how cool the fortress was while I built it. Everyone from little kids, their parents, all the way up to older folks were attracted to the sand fortress. Hey, everybody likes a good sand castle. I happily answered their many questions while I worked and thanked them for their compliments. I was asked a few times what was in the sand to make it stand up so well. Some people seemed surprised, even reluctant to believe that it was just sand and water.
This fortress goes down in the books because I made my first real good arch. It spanned the four foot tower and the one next to it. It was about ten inches across and arched about a foot and a half over the sand at beach level. Every time I build a sand fortress I learn something new, and today I really taught myself about arches. One secret about arches is that once you make it, the more sand you can dig out from underneath it, the taller and more dramatic it appears. So I dug deep. Tall towers and arches are the pinnacles of sand castle design, and this fortress had both.
This was the first fortress Lisa had seen in person and that was nice. I had no camera, so this one only lives on in the memories of me and Lisa and the other people at the beach that day. One note, however: The following weekend, we went back to Lanikai and I built another fortress. While doing so, a girl walked by and complimented me on it. She also told me she saw the one I had made the previous week (which was this one), and she liked it so much, she took pictures of it. I didn't think about it until she walked away, but then I remembered I had no pictures of this one. If I had been thinking, I would have asked her for copies since those could be the only existing photographs of SF4290. So--if you are reading this, and you are that girl, or you know that girl, I would very much like to get copies of those photos. Send me some email and we can work something out, including, at the very least, a mention on this web site.
As we were packing up our towels to leave the beach, a small group of people stopped by and said, "Wow, who did this?" I claimed authorship, and talked with them briefly about it. A couple of kids came by with their mother, and one of the kids, probably six, couldn't resist touching the tower. His mother cautioned him, but I let him touch it and he did no damage. It's good to be curious.
Then we walked away, leaving people gathered around the fortress. It was a good day at the beach.