One man living at Cape Marco was so intrigued with what he saw from his condominium window, he watched the progress with a telescope.
When Tom Tailer and his wife, Beth, go on vacations, Beth likes hot tropical spots.
"I can't blame her," said Tom recalling there was still snow on the ground at home in Essex, Vt.
They live in a 200-year-old home on the town common where they raise sheep, chickens and enjoy a large herb garden.
It was Beth's 50th birthday.
"We spontaneously said, 'Let's look for some place great to go.' Beth did a Web search and found Marco," said Tom.
They first went through the Internet looking at live webcams for people in the water and on the beach.
"We found a great rental on Marco Island just a block from the beach. So we came on down," Tom said. Beth usually sits under a cabana or tent and serves Tom grapes or strawberries or pate, red wine or margaritas.
"I play in the sand, and she enjoys meeting people and reading novels," Tom said. "It's a delightful relationship the two of us have."
Tom grew up around Martha's Vineyard.
"I loved playing in the sand," he said. "Many kids when they get to be teenagers stopped doing it. I just never did."
At Dartmouth, he studied architecture. Tom ended up getting a degree in political science. Part of his degree was geology and soil science.
One vacation, he and Beth were on Harbor Island in the Bahamas. Tom sculpted a series of churches. After two days in the sun and wind, they began to show signs of erosion. He was thrilled the sand sculptures on Marco held up for over five days.
Tom's technical explanation for the sand sculptures holding up so well was because of the sand.
"What you want is fine sand mixed with coarser fragments. With very little air in it, the structure wicks moisture up. As it wicks moisture up from underneath, it maintains its moisture content," Tom said. "The salt content also is actually increasing as the salt water evaporates."
One afternoon as Tom worked on a cathedral, a bird landed on the crucifix on top.
"I was showered with sand," said Tom. "The bird just missed my head as the crucifix collapsed. It was very funny."
He said he was surprised that the bird did not do much major structural damage.
One of his first sculptures on Marco was a 12th century British early Gothic church with Moorish influence. The architecture included intricate Gothic arches. Tom thought when he first arrived, that the sand on Marco was horrible because it had so many shells.
They went to Winn Dixie to buy a colander.
"My wife told them with great humor what we were going to do with it," Tom said. "They laughed and gave it to us for a sale price. After we sifted the sand, it was wonderful."
A few of the tools he uses to create his sculptures are a putty knife, spatula, apple corer and dental pick for details.
"I used the apple corer to sculpt the quatrefoils," Tom said.
He chooses not to spray anything artificial on the sand structures for environmental reasons. The sifted sand is then saturated with water in a bucket and laid down by handfuls, which causes the sand grains to lock together.
"I focus mainly on religious architecture, which is a delightful way to react to people in the universe," said Tom. "If I do traditional sandcastle fortifications, they are militaristic in nature. People react to spirit architecture very differently."
At Myrtle Beach a couple years back, Tom built seven-foot-tall sand churches.
"People walking down the beach would start whispering about 100 feet out," said Tom. "That told me I knew I was doing something right."
While in the Bahamas, he sculpted a Japanese spirit gate. A Japanese tour group stopped at the beach. One couple who did not speak any English stayed all day to play in the sand with Tom and Beth. Together, they built a Japanese meditation garden.
Tom works in a white cotton tuxedo shirt with a bandana tied around his neck and heavy linen pants because they hold up in the abrasive sand. A leather hat helps keep the sun off his face. He started dressing that way when he visited his mother in the hospital. Tom saw so many people at the hospital with melanoma.
One woman who stopped to talk to Beth and Tom owns a greeting card company and wants to use the sand cathedrals on one of her greeting cards. They were very pleased with that prospect.
"We had a wonderful meal at Island Café," said Beth. They enjoyed meeting owners Lisa and Denis Meurgue. The same couple with the telescope, who live at Cape Marco, were also dining at Island Café the same evening. They stopped to say hello. They recognized Tom and Beth as the architects on the beach.
In Essex, Tom is a high school physics teacher who works at the University of Vermont in the education program. He and his wife are co-directors of the Governor's Institute, running their summer camp through the University of Vermont. The camp's purpose is to get kids excited about engineering.
Beth is a neo natal intensive care nurse at a local hospital. She also works at a ski area playing the role of Mother Nature in a teepee.
As Tom and Beth said good-bye to Mike and Judy, who they met on the beach on Marco and went canoeing with in the Everglades, they all agreed to meet again in the future.
Tom's and Beth's fantasy is when they retire, to travel and build sand sculptures on beaches around the world.
"We have met and literally talked to several hundred people in the last three days (on Marco), which is delightful," said Tom. "Marco is a very interesting community."
