Sandcastle World Record for The Neonatal Trust NZ
1523 Sandcastles!
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 Neonatal 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. This will be confirmed over the
next 6-8 weeks
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!
ends