Even though the Flagg family won first place over all last year, competing in the Clamshell Foundation’s 35th annual Sandcastle Contest at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett on Saturday was a last-minute decision.
The night before the competition, the team — consisting of the East Hampton, New Hampshire, and France branches of the Flagg family — began drafting their structure.
“We were joking around, should we make a little sign that says defending champions? So yeah, the pressure is on,” Tanya Flagg said on Saturday.
Last year, the family built a “How to Train Your Dragon”-inspired sand castle.
This year, they were inspired by another movie, ultimately deciding to recreate the helmet worn by Odysseus and his men in “The Odyssey.”
“I was kind of thinking of something to do with the new ‘Spiderman,’ but our family’s really into Greek mythology. I actually got the idea because my brother is in the Coast Guard Academy right now, and he’s in boot camp, and he loves Greek mythology,” said Vita Flagg, Tanya’s daughter, who is a rising high school junior from New Hampshire and was the chief architect of the project.
The Flaggs have been competing in the contest on and off for 10 years.
“This is our favorite day of the year, to participate in all this. It’s so exciting and thrilling and Atlantic Beach is such a family beach,” said Tanya Flagg.
Started in 1992 by the architect Rossetti Perchik and builder William Kalbacher, the Sandcastle Contest is the primary fund-raiser for the Clamshell Foundation, a nonprofit that supports other nonprofits and community initiatives in Montauk, East Hampton, Amagansett, Springs, and Sag Harbor.
“The main goal of the Clamshell Foundation is to make our community a better place by helping people, by involving the people in the community,” said Mr. Kalbacher. “We have the same rules, and believe it or not, we have different generations of families. You see families on the beach, cooperating, building things that they’ve thought about all year that come back to this annual event.”
Down the beach, Anna Hugo, Maya and Jordan Miller, and Matt Schneiderman, second-generation competitors, were building “Jalen Brun-sand,” their Knicks-inspired sand sculpture, complete with a charcoal number 11 and seaweed braids.
“Every year we like to do a little bit of a beach pun,” said Ms. Miller.
Last year, they created a large sand ass, calling their creation “Beach Bum,” and the year before, they built “Card Shark,” a creation depicting sharks playing poker.
Other members of their family were building a “sand-clops,” also from “The Odyssey” right next to them.
There were less-seasoned builders too.
It was around 12:30 p.m. when the Keogh, Kraus, and Huntley kids — competing for the second year — realized they needed to figure out how to protect their World Cup stadium sculpture from the rising tide.
Plunging their plastic shovels into the sand, the kids, all Amagansett elementary schoolers, began building a barricade with a moat behind it.
Nevertheless, by 2:30 the waves had washed away their structure and the younger members of their families were splashing around in the small pool that had formed in the large hole they had dug.
Their sand castle had been judged before the waves swept it away, so while the team was sad, their hard work could still pay off.
By 3, most of the sand castles were still standing, although the tide was encroaching on them, turning the wonderful creations into soggy masses.
The Odyssey helmet, though, was still standing. And while it didn’t have it yet, perhaps next year the Flaggs could put up a sign that says “two-time defending champions.”
