IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif. -- The Pacific Ocean crashing behind him, Greg LeBon tied on his Husky tool belt crammed with chisels, plastic straws and a blush brush big enough to coat a whole cheek. He stared at the sand.
It had been soaked and raked, and the sun had dried it. Now LeBon and his nine teammates had five hours to chisel it into a 7-foot-tall coral reef and bug-eyed fish.
LeBon's Orange County sand sculpting team, Archisand, is among Southern California's best, having earned top honors here at the U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition five times in seven years as they went into this year's contest.
The team has shaped sand into a poker party and a Hogwarts Castle, with no glue or cement to make the grains stick together.
The beach is where LeBon, a 48-year-old architect, can unleash the creativity he rarely uses while haggling over a project's cost or timetable. On the sand, he is as captivated as a 10-year-old with a pail and shovel, and companies pay thousands of dollars for him to play.
He has crossed the Pacific to build a princess-worthy castle in Japan. He helped dot Corona del Mar with more than 90 tiki heads. He built a large sandbox in his Aliso Viejo backyard and, when he was moving to Mission Viejo, sculpted in it "For Sale."
At this summer's 27th annual U.S. Open, LeBon's group planned to carve a roller coaster crashing through a wall of coral and fish. Its cars would carry a penguin and an octopus whose eyes were bulging with fear.
An air horn blared, and LeBon and his teammates bounded onto the sand and began shoveling and flinging sand into what they hoped would be a masterpiece, if only for an hour.
As a kid in the South Bay, LeBon built mini-cities, but with Lincoln Logs. Not until he was studying architecture at the University of Oregon in the early 1980s did the shoreline beckon.
On a whim, he and some buddies entered a competition nearby. They chiseled a Mayan pyramid and won. They entered the world championships in White Rock, B.C. They won again. The $1,000 prize paid for lodging and beer. LeBon was hooked.
In 1983, LeBon met Todd Vander Pluym, who was dazzling gawkers at Huntington Beach with his complex medieval turrets. Most sand artists were working the coastal contest circuit, but Vander Pluym realized that his oceanfront hobby could pay his rent.
