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Fortress A150Home \ Fortresses \ Oct 2000 \ A150
Location: Bellows Beach |
Sunday, October 15, 2000
Moira DeNike had a cousin in town who had never been to Bellows Beach.
Lisa
and I had planned on going to Bellows this weekend and Moira wanted to take her
cousin there, so we picked them up at their hotel and drove around the side of the
island once again to Bellows Beach, one of my favorite places.
-Shut up and get to the pictures-
I had checked the tide charts and saw that low tide was around 11:00 am and after staying up very late working on this web site, I didn't exactly get up early in the morning. I'd have to get to the beach around 9:30 to construct a fortress with a drainage system, and since we left the house around 10:30, I didn't bother bringing the drainage components.
Since the tide was coming in and I had not brought any 5 gallon buckets to carry water (and didn't feel like carrying 5 gallons buckets full of water even if I had brought them), I would have to build close to the water, and whatever I would build, wouldn't last long. So I decided to build a wall type fortress. I like making walls because they're easy and quick and you can adjust their angle as you move along the beach according to the tide, i.e. bending it away from the tide when it starts running higher up the beach. And this is what I did.
I made three towers, connected by two walls, one about 8-feet long, the other about four. The ability, at any given point, to either make a tower or just keep continuing the wall is another thing I like about making walls. I like the sheer spontaneity of it.
At one point, while building up a new tower with wet cement, a jelly fish floated up and landed in my foot. I first discovered this by the burning sensation. I knew before I looked down what it was. The little bastard. I kicked it up the beach, but the damage had been done. I rubbed the area with sand and just had to let the sting wear off. Those little bastards had been invading the beach for weeks. Last weekend one attacked my hand. Since I had been attacked so many times in recent weeks by jelly fish floating up to the beach, I figured I might actually be safer in the water. So I went body boarding after the water smashed the fortress... but I'm getting ahead of myself, and ruining the ending of this story.
So anyway, I had about a 12-15 foot wall constructed. I then angled the wall 90°, straight back, away from the water. The tide was really starting to come in. As I was starting this part of the wall, a wave came up and gently rolled around the far side of the wall and flooded the area behind it. It looked cool and right then I wished I had brought my drainage pipes so I could stick a couple of short ones under the wall. But I didn't, so instead, I decided to build two towers and an arch, and use the arch to drain the water. I did it and it came out looking really nice. I'm getting better at making nice arches. Then a few more waves rolled around the far end again, this time draining back out of the other side, through the arch.
I extended the wall a little farther, but the tide really started hitting the wall hard, so I stopped at that point and took some pictures. Fortunately, so did Moira. Because as I was taking my photos, the area behind the wall flooded again, and drained again, but as the water drained, it was eroding the sand at the base of both sides of the arch, which was not a surprise. As Lisa and I were watching it drain, "fisssss," down went the arch. (A little onomatopoeia for you there.) The citizens of the fortress would have to deal with the flooding now that the arch was clogged with a pile of collapsed sand. I had planned on taking a few more angles of the arch, including a close-up shot through it, but that's why I'm glad Moira took pictures too--because she got those exact shots.
The fortress towers quickly started to fall one by one. A small group of people came over and talked to me after the arch fell in, asking the same questions: Are you an architect? Do you build in the local sand contests? How long did it take? Why did you shave your chest hairs? I thought that was a little too personal, then I realized the last question was the voice in my head and the people had left. The sun must have been stronger than I thought. Anyway, while we were all standing there, the entire 8-foot section of the wall fell over against the tide. I figured this would be a good fortress to get destruction action shots of, so I examined the remaining towers to see which one would go down next. There were two good candidates and I poised myself near one that was leaning a little and had a heavy stress fracture behind it and waited. I figured it would go first, then I'd get the runner-up when it fell. After about five minutes and several waves, I knew it would go, and sure enough, through the view finder in the camera I could see it moving forward. All of a sudden, through the camera, I saw the runner-up tower fall in the distance with a wet squish into the moist sand. Damn. But I didn't flinch; I had to keep focused on the tower in front of me. And two seconds later, it fell and I snapped the picture.
The day was a success, especially since the tide had been coming in. There was a time that I wouldn't have even bothered to build a fortress without a bucket and with the tide coming like that, but now I can whip out a quick, fun little fortress wall, get pictures, and watch it fall over.
Afterwards, I went body boarding (and my hunch was correct: I was not bothered by jelly fish) and then the four of us just hung out in the shade of Bellows Beach and joked around for a while.
We eventually left the beach, went to Chili's, and I got fairly pounded on two top shelf margaritas. I'm such a lightweight anymore, and they put way too much tequila in those things: a combination I have come to enjoy quite nicely. In no uncertain terms, it was a good day.
Photos pending - coming soon...
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