Ocean Fortress

Father's day was great! We all headed to New River Beach for a pinic and day of relaxing. Now when we go to New River Beach, there are only really two things that we do. (A) catch as many crabs as possible or (B) build a giant sand castle and defy the vast and terrible ocean with a highly complex ODS (Ocean Defense System). I think you know which one we picked!

We start by building a castle. Due to the impending threat of the highest tides in the world, time does not permit us to fully exude our creativity, but we have to make something that is worth defending. Shiloh and I worked hard on a central castle with a star tower design.

Emma was busy helping get sand with her dad and she also helped her grandfather create the first level moat defense. Jonah felt that it was necessary to test the walls and moat early on to keep us informed of possible weaknesses. We call this Rapid Defense Development. Build-test-Build-test, and so forth. Jonah can be seen here carrying a live ocean test to the construction site.



The next phase is the Barrier Wall. As most of you know, waves tend to crash into things. Therefore the Barrier Wall's strength becomes the defining feature of the ODS. We used a large bucket to pack sand tightly and dump load after load after load onto the Barrier Wall.


For the final touches, Josh mounted a pepsi look-out tower and then we both worked on a pre-moat defense (these are only possible if you have time before the first wave strikes).


Once the battle started, we carried over a log to help the Barrier Wall. I tried talking the ocean down, but it would not negotiate.


After fighting off the first wave of waves, the castle stood strong, but the ocean was relentless. The Barrier wall kept taking blow after blow. As the waves grew larger, Josh and I knew that the only way to protect the castle was to soften the blows with our bodies.


With all hope lost, Josh and I went on the offensive. In a blaze of fury, we dove and flipped and kicked and belly-flopped the waves to smithereens, but as we looked behind us and saw the seaweed flag sink down, we knew that the war was lost once more.............

Next year we are going to bring concrete!!



We hope you all had a wonderful father's day too!