Jarrett's Castle, the Journey to the Top

FARMINGTON -- Ed Jarret has already gotten his fairy tale -- two Guinness record-holding world's tallest castles, and possibly one more, standing at 38 feet and 0.75 inches tall.

F.A. Hesketh & Associates, Inc., of East Granby, surveyed the castle at 2 p.m. at Winding Trails in Farmington on Friday, the first day the final wooden support frames were removed. That makes Jarrett's Castle eligible to top his previous record of 31 feet, 7 inches in Maine. In order to qualify for a Guinness record, the castle has to be made entirely of natural material. Jarrett's is composed of sand and water.

He first broke the record in 2003, with a 29-foot-3-inch castle, also in Maine, beating Finland’s record of 28 feet.

 But to Jarrett, a Canton resident and director of golf and operations at Farmington Woods, building community spirit is more important than building the tallest sandcastle in the world.

“I only do it for charity,” he said.

Jarrett invites the public to come see it from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday. There will be a scavenger hunt for the kids to find pictures of bicycles, shells and other symbols on the castle, as well as a castle coloring book.

Admission costs $10 a car load to raise money for his five charities -- the Save Walton Pond project at Winding Trails, Special Olympics Connecticut, Gifts of Love, New Horizons, and UCONN Children’s Cancer Fund. Jarrett’s Castle T-shirts and refreshments will also be on sale to raise money.

Over the course of 2,500 hours working on the project since a snowy April 1, Jarrett has enlisted the help of 1,500 volunteers.

“We also had a lot of our high school volunteers help build it. They call themselves the Volunteens,” Diana Goode, director of Gifts of Love in Avon, said. “They were helping to pack it all down so that it held. They were also telling people about the castle. ... People had a lot of questions about what was going on. Our kids became castle experts.”

There are at least 15 artists sculpting works of their own. Farmington residents and painters Ron Curry and Emma Marianetti are working on a pirate ship beside the lake. Both are working in sand for the first time. Marianetti, who is originally from Argentina, said that she has learned that patience is a virtue with sand sculpting, which is always evolving and that if something falls, you have to try something else.

“We have some problems because the boat was collapsed in some areas because the sand didn’t rise properly,” Marianetti said, adding that during Thursday’s thunderstorm, the night before the final measurement, “we were worried for the castle.”

As a kid, Jarrett felt discouraged that when he built sandcastles, simply by flipping over a bucket, the waves always washed his creations away.

However, patience is something that Jarrett has since learned, considering his failed first attempt at the Guinness Book record for the world's tallest sandcastle in 2002, falling short by two feet. He tried again the following year, mainly to draw people to the park in Maine where he built it. He was inspired by the World’s Tallest Snowman record set in Maine.

While it has been nearly four years since his last attempt, Jarrett continued to sculpt for fun, occasionally for other people, from a husband asking him to build a sand heart outside his doorstep for his wife on her birthday to designing a monkey sculpture that is on display at LaSalle Market & Deli in Collinsville.

Jarrett planned to send a package of photos, media coverage, letters from at least two town officials and other required evidence of his record-breaking feat to the Guinness Book of World Records review committee on Friday. That could take six to eight weeks and the record is not official until Guinness sends a certificate.

Farmington Town Council Chairman Michael Clark wrote a letter on Jarrett’s behalf.

“It’s truly an amazing structure,” Clark said on Friday. “I didn’t know what to expect and it has certainly exceeded any expectation I could have had. ... It’s an exciting thing for the town of Farmington.”

It took 1.6 million pounds of water and sand from Dunning Sand & Gravel to build Jarrett’s Castle.

The fundraiser goes until June 30, but if the castle has not fallen by the fall, Jarrett wants to do some more carving on his castle to make it look haunted during Halloween.

“This will be up for six months, Scott Brown, executive director of Winding Trails said. “We did a test castle last August, which is still standing on our beach, all through winter …”

This may not be the last time that Jarrett tries to build the world’s tallest sandcastle.

Where to next?

“We’re looking at New York next,” Jarrett said. “I’d like to go down and do a dedication to New York City. They’ve been through a lot."

Winding Trails is located at 50 Winding Trails Dr., Farmington. For more information on Jarrett's Castle, visit www.jarretscastle.com.