Fantasies Take Shape, Rise From Sand

Ah, if only work could be like this. A professional architect, Greg LeBon must painstakingly craft each building he designs, enduring change after change in his renderings. Sometimes, after weeks of effort, a structure never even gets built.

But not on Sunday. With a team of nine others recruited from the Orange County firm where he works, LeBon saw a whole forest of skyscrapers rise in a matter of hours, each of them sculpted from the sands of Imperial Beach.

Like a seaside Michelangelo, LeBon stood back when the sand had finally settled and admired the group’s handiwork--a mini version of the San Francisco skyline just as the big earthquake hits. Fixed in time, the sand buildings seem to sway. Fissures have opened in the earth.

For LeBon, it seems better than the real thing: a project completed, start to finish, in about five hours. “Instant design and instant gratification, that’s why we do it,” he said. “Work is never this quick. That’s why this is so great.”

LeBon’s crew of sand sculptors was among 44 teams in six categories that carved up the beach Sunday as part of the eighth annual United States Open Sandcastle Competition in Imperial Beach. The event, replete with carnival games and food stands, drew a crowd of more than 100,000 and clogged streets all along the beachfront.

For the contestants, however, the day started long before the throng of sun worshipers began to gather. Several of the masters class competitors arrived shortly after dawn to begin gathering buckets of water and preparing the 30-by-30-foot plots where each would wage battle.

The first few hours of the competition are the most brutal. Each team fills buckets with sand or water and carries them up to its roped-off construction site, filling huge wooden forms or simply piling load upon load in rough shapes that hardly hint at what is to come.

Once the wet sand is in place, the fun part starts as contestants sculpt the design of their dreams. Armed with everything from shovels and rakes to trowels and small etching tools, the teams shape the sand into works of art.

Several crews fashioned dinosaurs, while others sculpted dragons. Another produced a simple figure of a life-sized, bikini-clad female sunbather reclining on the shore. One entrant featured a massive table set with plates and utensils beside a fish dinner. Still another depicted a jumbo-sized hair dryer and comb.

Prizes for Winners

The top prize and $4,000 in the masters division went to a group known as Team Hardcore, which fashioned an imaginative scene from “Alice in Wonderland.” An intricately formed castle earned $2,000 and second-place honors for the California Dreamers team, and the depiction of San Francisco at the moment when The Big One hits garnered $1,000 and third prize for LeBon’s group.

Tom Kirstein, head judge in the masters category, praised each of the contestants, saying that the 1988 crop seemed superior to those of past years.

“You can kind of tell which are best by the crowds that gather around,” Kirstein said. “The kids are the best critics of all. They will always go wreck the worst ones first at the end of the day.”

Although their workmanship is destined to be consumed by the surf or the tromping feet of youngsters, most of the contestants said they wouldn’t have it any other way.

‘Doing This for Fun’

“It doesn’t bother any of us,” said Guy Strickland, a member of the Flying Zambinnis, a team composed mostly of Grossmont High graduates. “We’re just doing this for fun. We’ll be here next year, and hopefully the year after that.”

Strickland conceded, however, that his team’s entry this year would be protected from predators as long as possible. Dubbed “Ten Ton Plunge,” it depicts an elephant that has belly-flopped into a watering hole, sending crocodiles and hippos fleeing. An ingenious pump system buried in the sand allows the elephant to squirt water out of his trunk on command.

“We don’t let the kids do it anymore,” he said. “Since we built it, we figure we should be the ones to tear it apart. We’ll probably bury each of us in front of a crocodile so it looks like we’re being eaten and take pictures.”

Larry Chaffers and his brother, Mike, have a philosophical approach to their efforts.

“The way I look at it, the tide just kinda gives back to the sea what we took,” said Larry Chaffers, who began building sandcastles more than two decades ago.

His brother agrees, noting that, “if these things stayed up, my wife wouldn’t let me come back and do it again.”

Larry Chaffers got into the sandcastle craze back in the ‘60s, then recruited his brother, a designer by trade, about a dozen years ago. Mike Chaffers has been at it ever since. These days, he often practices his sculpting on a pile of sand in his back yard. When the family heads to the beach, “I always bring my sandcastle stuff down,” he said. “It drives my wife crazy.”

Friends sometimes find his hobby a bit peculiar, Mike Chaffers said.

“When I talk sandcastles, I’m talking business,” he said. “I tell friends they ought to come on down and try it. But there still are a few who think I’m some middle-aged kid.”

The work, he said, is enrapturing.

“There’s just something about it when you start carving,” Mike Chaffers commented, a bit wistfully. “I get into it. I’m walking down that castle stairway, or across that turret. Then, like nothing, the day is over.”