NAWILIWILI — Carolyn Sellmeyer of Houston, Texas, said seeing Jeff Haigh ply his magic with the sand at Kalapaki Beach is a tradition. “We come here every year,” Sellmeyer said. “And we love it.” Tuesday afternoon, Haigh was busy under
NAWILIWILI — Carolyn Sellmeyer of Houston, Texas, said seeing Jeff Haigh ply his magic with the sand at Kalapaki Beach is a tradition.
“We come here every year,” Sellmeyer said. “And we love it.”
Tuesday afternoon, Haigh was busy under the warm sun working with a pile of sand which he turned into a whale coming out of the water — not breaching, or diving, but coming up for a look-around.
“It’s not a Hershey Kiss,” he told Grayson Moore, who watched the native of Auburn, California, in action. “When we left, it was just a pile. That’s when it looked like a Hershey’s Kiss.”
But the back fell in while Jeff and Cindy Haigh broke for lunch.
“Now, I’m trying to save this and create something,” he said. “Originally, there were supposed to be waves and water, and the whale. Now, it’s a whale and we’ll see what develops.”
Cindy said the inspiration for doing a whale came after they attended Ilima Rivera’s luau at the Kamokila Hawaiian Village on Saturday.
“She sang a song, ‘Colors of the Wind,’ which she modified to be Hawaiian,” Cindy said. “In the song, she talks a lot about whales, and that’s when it hit me — we’ll do a whale and dedicate it to Ilima Rivera and her dad Larry.”
The project started by having the sand heaped into shape. Dickie Chang loaned them a shovel and some other equipment.
“Last year, I broke the shovel while we were making a Santa,” Cindy said.
Jeff said he started sand sculpting about seven years ago.
“I was bored,” he said. “She went mountain biking and I just stayed on the beach and started doing this. Kalapaki Beach has really nice sand for sculpting. It’s almost like Hanalei. Now, I do sand sculptures, mostly at Kalapaki. We love it here and have been coming for more than 20 years.”
One project can take up to six hours.
“It’s a couple of tons when it’s done,” he said. “Just for this whale, we used the buckets and already have hauled more than 3,000 pounds of water.”
Cindy said the finished product is artwork.
“It does not last forever as the weather takes its toll on the sand sculpture,” she said. “It does not need the help of feet or hands to shorten its life. Let it sit so others can enjoy it — nature will decide when it’s done.”
Santa is scheduled to arrive aboard a double-hulled outrigger canoe on Christmas Eve on the sands of Kalapaki Beach.
“I’m going to create a Santa for that,” Jeff said. “Last year, we had a Santa on a surfboard and there were a lot of cameras taking pictures of people with the sculpture.”
