"These weren't your ordinary sand castles. Engineers, architects and builders - along with hordes of small children - descended on Ocean Beach in San Francisco on Saturday for the Bay Area's largest and most intense sand-castle-building contest. The theme was "sand blast," a term vague enough to allow just about anything to be built. They weren't "castles" as much as they were ideas. One team built the bird and slingshot from the popular smart-phone game "Angry Birds." Another built a UFO blasting off. There was a giant boom box with a break dancer's shoe in front. Rooftop School's project was perhaps the most ambitious: Wile E. Coyote riding a rocket to chase down a decoy Road Runner, who, unbeknownst to his pursuer, was strapped with dynamite. "It's the one time of year that I get to come out and play in the sand," said Jatin Chopra, 29, of San Francisco, whose wife's architecture firm - Bohlin Cywinski Jackson - helped design the Wile E. Coyote scene. The rules are fairly straightforward. Everything had to come from the beach. No powered machinery. You have four hours to build. But imaginations and a year of planning can do a lot. Because the key to a good castle is the water, almost every team dug large ditches, lined them with tarps, and formed bucket brigades to bring water from the ocean. Some dug lined canals that led to the troughs. Last year, one team jury-rigged a bicycle and pumped water from the ocean with pedal power. "You have to keep drenching it and drenching it," said Kevin Firenze, an estimator with Dome Construction, who with tongue firmly in cheek called himself the "sand master" of the boom box structure. "If you don't pack it in, when you start carving, it falls apart." "It's all very technical stuff," Firenze said with a smile. "I took a lot of classes."" - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

I participated in the Leap Sandcastle event in 2009 and 2010 with my last company. Great times and the participation with the kids was so rewarding :) - Tamara J.

This event actually showed up on this new site called FamFunDo.com. I NEVER would have even thought to look this up, but I think next year we'll plan to go. Looks amazing! - Yvonne