Long Island sand castle competitions, plus tips for making your best sculpture

When Viola Connelly and her friend Casey Metzler, both 10, enter the annual Saltaire Sandcastle Contest on Fire Island, the girls from Manhattan and Brooklyn choose a timely theme — they craft an enormous shark’s head protruding from the sand, spray its mouth with red tie-dye coloring and even add an unfortunate Barbie doll victim.

James McElhone, 7, of Manhattan, makes a replica of the White House, complete with the East and West Wings. “I looked in a book and made sure I had the right amount of columns in the front. There’s six,” he says.

And the father-daughter duo of Dan and Audrey Hoffman of Brooklyn — 54 and 15, respectively — who have in the past constructed a roller coaster from sand — “that one took a lot,” Dan says — opt for an Egyptian pyramid.

Building a sand castle isn’t just grabbing a bucket and shovel anymore. Even for amateurs, sand castle building 2.0 means using tools — such as ice cream scoops, weed sprayers and colorful dyes — and entails adding found objects such as seaweed, shells, driftwood and, sometimes, even trash found along the shoreline to create imaginative sand art that intrigues passersby.

Livia Basche, 14, of Harlem, is the director of her family’s effort. “We brought a lot of kitchen tools, like an oyster knife, spoons and cookie cutters. We also brought some spackling tools like palette knives that help to smooth edges. "We don’t know what’s going to be useful until we start,” she says. An ice cream scoop, for instance, can help to carve out parts, and the heart-shaped cookie cutters can decorate the sand around the sculpture.

GREAT FAMILY ACTIVITY

“It’s just a fun beach day thing to do,” says the elder Hoffman, an entrepreneur, on the July Saturday of this year's contest. The duo has in the past also made a treasure chest and a boardwalk. “We did a bowling alley one year,” Audrey says. “How can we lose when we’re so sincere?” Dan's T-shirt reads, featuring Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

The judges for this particular competition look for imagination and a good story behind the concept, says Tracy Rudd, who runs the free-to-enter Saltaire Citizens Association contest and interviews families while wearing a red “JUDGE” baseball cap and carrying a clipboard.

But you don’t need a contest to spur a build — just nice day and a beach. Sand castle building is a great family activity — Valerie Dixon, 45, a lawyer from Brooklyn, says her children were so excited to sculpt their creations that they couldn’t wait and started more than three hours before the scheduled judging. “We have been looking forward to this,” Dixon says.

“I’m making an octopus. I just made a head and I’m working on the tentacles,” says her daughter Lexi, 7, as she puts holes in the tentacles to make them look realistic. “Mommy, how do you like my octopus so far?” she asks. “I think your octopus is beautiful,” Dixon replies.

Lexi’s younger brother, Luca, 4, is making a mosasaurus — a dinosaur that lives in the water. “Oh, some seaweed would be perfect,” he says as he dashes off to grab some and add it to decorate his creature. He also adds sea shells for scales.

COMPETITORS OFFER TIPS

The key to a successful sand castle begins with making sure the sand is saturated with water collected in buckets from the ocean and poured onto your sand, Dan Hoffman says. “It soaks through and makes the sand harder so we can shape it after without it all crumbling,” he explains. “We’re trying to build it up to make a strong base because we’re making a pyramid.”

Basche likes to make her creations “a little bit funny,” she says. She also chooses to sculpt a shark, but her shark is literary. “A lot of people here like to sit on the beach and read a book and relax. Our shark is unique because it’s reading a book.” It's reading “Bad Summer People,” a novel that actually takes place on Saltaire; a s’mores stick is used to write the title of the book in the sand, sea glass is used to make the shark’s teeth.

Another year, Basche created an ice cream sandwich — but she did it by creating an ice cream cone topped by a witch’s hat — get it? An ice cream sand witch. In 2020, she built a sand mailbox meant to encourage people to vote during an election year.

BE PREPARED TO PIVOT

It’s important to have fun with your creation, agree friends Will Markus, of Brooklyn, Gio Sosa, of Springfield, N.J., and Michael Zimmerman, of Garden City, all 13, who create a smiling octopus. “Don’t make it tedious,” Sosa advises. Adds Will: “If you’re doing something big, break it into pieces.”

Be prepared to pivot if things don’t develop as planned. “We were originally trying to make Hogwarts,” Billy Myers, 12, of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, says of his creation, referring to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the “Harry Potter” series. “But that messed up, so we just made a castle on top of a hill.”

Some people use their sand castles to promote public awareness. Friends Elliot Gordon and Rhett Wilde, both 10 and of Brooklyn, and Cole Krueger, 11, of Woodbury, spend the morning collecting empty soda cans and discarded plastic bags from the beach to use in their project. They've come armed with a weed sprayer they fill with saltwater to keep the sand wet while they sculpt. Then they create a sea turtle mother and babies trying to head to the ocean, but their path is blocked by all the trash the boys set in front of the turtles. They title their work “Save Sea Life End Beach Waste.”

“Not only did we make this, but we cleaned up the beach,” Cole says.

By Beth Whitehouse

beth.whitehouse@newsday.comBethWhitehouse1

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.