OXNARD : Inland Heat Sends Crowds to Beaches

Jim Larma knows how to work a crowd.

The Bakersfield investigator did not miss a beat Sunday as more than a dozen people gathered around while he transformed a soupy mixture of sand and saltwater into an imposing fortress towering several feet high.

“It’s like Andy Warhol said,” said Larma, piling up still more sandy mud onto his sandcastle at Silverstrand Beach. “We all have our 15 minutes.”

Larma and his family were among thousands of tourists and locals who sought refuge from searing inland heat Sunday along the Ventura County coastline.

Thermometers rose to 94 degrees in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, while temperatures in Oxnard and Ventura reached 81, said James McCutcheon, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which forecasts for The Times. Piru and Fillmore hit 97 degrees, he said.

Forecasts through Wednesday call for mostly sunny skies with temperatures ranging from the upper 60s and 70s at the coast to the mid-80s and higher inland, McCutcheon said.

Down the beach from Larma’s creation, Silverstrand lifeguard Tyler Gold scanned the swells.

“There’s a lot of people, a lot of kids,” said Gold, a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo when he’s not patrolling the sands. “You’ve always got to watch out for them. These out-of-towners don’t go to the beach very often.”

At Surfers Point in Ventura, Nancy Lynn flipped the pages of a paperback novel as she sat by herself overlooking the waves.

“Actually, I’m a surf widow,” said Lynn, an Atascadero history teacher whose husband, Curtis, was testing the water. “It was supposed to be 104 (in Atascadero), so we’re escaping the heat.”

The Becker family from Boston took in the Surfers Point sights from the seats of a pedal cart they rented from Holiday Inn.

“We haven’t quite figured out this California thing yet,” said Aber Becker, who monitored 5-year-old daughter Emma while her husband, Jim, pedaled the craft along the bike path. “I haven’t seen this much flesh since we were in Florida.”