Minutes before the start of the 61st annual Cannon Beach Sandcastle Contest, teams in raincoats huddled together and not-so-secretly hoped the event would get called off. Heavy rain formed deep trenches in the sand they were soon expected to sculpt, and the forecast showed no signs of letting up. “This extra soggy sand is throwing a wrench into it,” said Karlen Trucke from team winecastlers. “Sand, when it’s this wet, will collapse under its own weight.” But if the coastal community canceled an event due to inclement weather, they would never get anything done. The starting horn blared, and contestants in every division plunged shovels and their bare hands into the sand. A man in a wetsuit ran by towing a wagon piled high with tools and a big stick. Another man pedaled a homemade contraption to pump out water collecting on his plot. Teams had five hours to build something impressive out of nothing, or rather, out of sludge. Sandcastle building has been taken seriously in Cannon Beach s...