Jen and I went to Westport this last weekend for Pirate Daze and the Sand and Sawdust festival in Ocean Shores. We headed off to Ocean Shores pretty much first thing Saturday morning to see the sand castle competition.
Teams had a roughly 12 foot square plot of beach to work in. The were assigned plots and allowed to set up their tools at 7am. They were unable to actually enter the plot and begin building until 9am. One of the things I was surprised to find out is that they did not allow you bring sand into or out of your plot. I suppose that just allows the ocean to put everything back pretty much where it came from.
Teams had until 3pm to build and were judged on things like height, cut-throughs, theme and using the plot evenly. We found out a few days before arriving here that Joel’s family was going to have a team present so we were excited to catch up with them and see how they did.
There are two beach access roads near the area and we wound up at the one furthest from the event. We had to walk about half a mile or so to get there but considering the state of parking where the event actually was I think it would have been the same either way. Plus, something about a walk along the beach seems a whole lot better than walking through a parking lot.
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| From Westport June 09 |
There were four different divisions for the competition; Family, Novice, Intermediate, and Master. the Family teams were clearly there just for the fun of hanging out together. I saw a bit of overlap in the Novice and Intermediate teams, but the Masters were just amazing. Particularly the theme and detail level of the Masters is what set them apart.
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| From Westport June 09 |
This team, in particular, reminded me of a team of archaeologists. It was as if they were uncovering something that was present already instead of building something that wasn’t. It was pretty neat to watch them work, their team was so tightly knit that they rarely needed to speak to one another.
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| From Westport June 09 |
Joel’s team was in the intermediate division. They went with a pop culter reference and chose a theme based on Transformers. I was leaning towards some of the more artistic themes, but what the hell do I know, they won their division!
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| From Westport June 09 |
It wasn’t supposed to turn out quite like this but I think adapting on-the-fly to build out Optimus Prime like a Sphinx was pretty inspired.
Here’s the winning team:
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| From Westport June 09 |
As the event wound down a little fella about Brady’s age walked behind me talking about the piece Joel’s team did. I could decide whether or not he was a jaded little shit or brilliant genius. He walked past and taking a long look said, “I bet they got paid to do that.”
Jaded or not, his observation was remarkable.
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