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Fortress 6110Home \ Fortresses \ June 2000 \ 6110
Location: Lanikai Beach |
Sunday, June 11, 2000
If I've been counting accurately, this is Fortress #14. Meiko,
Lisa, and I all went to Lanikai Beach. We got there
a little after noon and since I knew high tide was about 12:25 pm, I had left my
drainage pipes at home. No drainage system is practical if the tide is on its way out.
-Shut up and get to the pictures-
For this fortress, I decided to go for height. I planned to concentrate my efforts and time on constructing two tall towers with an arch between them. Since connected components of a sand fortress are so dependent on the strength of the bond between them, I built the foundation of both towers and the arch simultaneously. It is good to build the bonds between the parts at the same time, rather than building a tower, then an arch, then piling wet sand in between to bond them together: the sand in the tower and the arch has already begun to dry. Building them at the same time allows the sand to dry at roughly the same time for a better bond.
Once the foundation for the two towers and the arch was about six inches tall, I concentrated on the first tower and getting it as high as possible. I built it up to a height of over four feet, then gradually moved back to the arch and added to it. Then I completed the second tower. My goal was to get it higher then the first one, and to do this, I had given it a larger base. But it was during construction of this final tower that a minor catastrophe occurred.
Since I arrived at the beach right at high tide, I could build very close to the tide, which gave me a constant, convenient source of water. I didn't worry about premature destruction of the fortress since I knew the tide would be receding soon. But until it began its retreat, I would battle a little with the ebb tide, stopping construction occasionally to pile dry sand around the base to prevent erosion. The second tower was almost complete and was standing about four feet tall when it cracked in half and the front half slid forward, bringing down the top two thirds of the tower with it. It didn't fall over, it just sort of slid forward and dropped the top down. The resulting pile was still pretty wet and bonded together, so I could just build on top of the collapsed sand, which was now about a foot and a half tall. When it fell, I heard voices behind me say, "Ohhhh." I turned and saw Lisa, Meiko, and some other swimmers we didn't know in the water. They had all been watching me at the time of the collapse. Well, nothing to do now but keep building. Collapsing sand comes with the territory. Besides, now I had a larger base. But as I began piling sand on top of the collapsed tower, I discovered another problem: movement.
Although I couldn't see it, the front half of the newly collapsed mound was moving forward very slowly--too slow to see, but I could tell it was moving because a fault line crack had formed right through the middle. I patched it with wet sand and kept building, but it reappeared; a sign that the sand below was still moving. Seemingly innocuous at first glance, but an ominous sign of imminent doom if I kept piling heavy, wet sand on top of it. The sand at the base of the tower was too wet and this, combined with the erosion from the tide, caused the base to become unstable and slide forward. So I stopped building and piled a bunch of dry sand around the base to soak up water and to discourage erosion and help retard the sliding. After a few minutes, I had enough sand around the base, then tried piling more sand on the tower. The crack did not reappear, so my Emergency Preparedness Disaster Relief plan worked and I continued construction of the tower. I think I'll run for mayor.
Although the tower stopped moving forward, there remained a 1/4" crack through the lower center of the tower, so I stopped the height at around four feet. I didn't want the entire tower to collapse again. I had been building for almost two hours and hadn't even started carving yet.
So that was it for the construction. Then I carved it, and it all turned out quite nice. I spent some time doing some detailing on the second tower, which was the first to be carved, then moved to the arch. I made a really nice, tall, thick arch, and even had time to do some nice detailing on it. Lastly, I carved the first tower I built, but I was running out of time so I put very little detail into it. This made the towers appear different form each other, but it was a nice fortress. I took many pictures. Meiko brought her camera, and she took some pictures too.
We left shortly afterwards, leaving the fortress standing there on the beach. Lanikai is a relatively short beach. By this, I mean not much sand between the water and the bushes. Maybe I should say, it's a thin beach. As we were walking away, I noticed that the thin beach made the fortress look much bigger.
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