Sandcastle World Record for The Little Miracles Trust NZ
On Sunday 25th November 2012, Adventure Wellington embarked on its greatest challenge yet, to break the Guinness World Record for the most sandcastles built in one hour! And the Little Miracles Trust was the beneficiary!
A beautiful warm sunny morning dawned on Wellington’s Lyall Bay NZ. When I arrived at 7.30am there were already well over 100 excited volunteers from Adventure Wellington preparing and ready to coordinate an event that would see well in excess of 3000 people on Lyall Bay Beach.
We felt confident that we were going to at least equal the current world record of 683 sandcastles built in one hour that has been held in Scarborough, Great Britain for 2 months, as well as, quietly optimistic that we would smash the current record.
Sir Richard Taylor, Lady Tania Roger, Martin Baynton and Weta Workshop designed and built special sandcastle buckets to help Adventure Wellington take this record. The requirements for an official sandcastle were very specific and had to measure 2ft high and 2ft wide, with 4 turrets on top, had to be constructed within one hour for the Guinness World Record to be broken
Our Special Guest, Evangeline Lilly from ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lost’ was in there amongst our celebrity builders
A very tense 1 hour stand down time was had as the tide crept close to completed sandcastles and the gentle NW breeze became a strong wind before the official count could take place.
Out of the 1764 official sandcastle that were built and measured, 241 didn’t make the grade leaving us with a total 1523 sandcastles that were heavily scrutinized by representatives of Guinness World Record.
If every sandcastle had of been counted including the unofficial sandcastles, there would have been well over 3000 built in one hour over a 2.5km stretch of beach.
Sandcastles are built to be smashed, Sandcastle world records are there to be smashed too. After the official announcement we suggested that every sandcastle could be smashed. It was amazing to see kids, teenagers, mums and dads, Nana’s and Granddads running down the beach smashing everyone’s huge fantastic fun morning and a great end to a perfect Sunday Morning in Wellington
We did both, WE SMASHED IT. 1523 SANDCASTLES!
Michael N Meads
Chief Executive
The Little Miracles Trust NZ
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