May 31, 2007 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Here’s the question that Stein Kretsinger and Robert Weinman are asking anyone who will listen as they travel by foot and kayak up America’s East Coast:
What’s the best kind of structure to build on a barrier island?
Their answer: A sandcastle.
“Barrier islands are always shifting, moving, nomadic,” Mr. Kretsinger explains on a call from where he and Mr. Weinman came ashore last week in Virginia. “The most appropriate and practical thing to build on them is a sandcastle, not a condo or hotel or house.”
The two travelers are in the midst of what they call the Beach Walk Project, a 1,600-mile walking and kayaking journey that started in February in Miami, and is expected to end later this summer in New York. The trip is meant to promote environmental stewardship of the nation’s coastlines and waterways, and to raise money and support for the Waterkeeper Alliance, an organization in New York that represents 157 local clean-water groups around the world.
Eddie Scher, a Waterkeeper spokesman, says his group doesn’t expect to raise big sums from Beach Walk — he guesses they’ve received just a few hundred dollars in gifts so far — but that the big returns will come in the form of raised awareness.
“Those guys are helping us reach new people and leverage larger ideas about the environment and community involvement,” Mr. Scher says.
Mr. Kretsinger and Mr. Weinman are traveling 15 to 30 miles a day either paddling or kite-sailing in their kayaks or walking on the beach, pulling their boats behind them on wheels. Along the way, they take time out to meet with school groups and environmental organizations to talk about the trip and its mission.
The pair has put together a slide show, too, that includes photographs illustrating the problems with erosion and pollution they have witnessed on their journey.
“The point is that we’re not scientists and we’re not experts on the environment, but even we can plainly see that a lot more needs to be done to protect, clean up, and preserve our beaches and oceans,” Mr. Kretsinger says. “That’s the message we are trying to get out by calling attention to what we are doing.”
Mr. Kretsinger, who made a fortune from the sale of an online marketing company he founded, and Mr. Weinman, who works at Mt. Hood Community College, in Oregon, were looking for what they call “an adventure with purpose.”
They hit upon the idea of going the distance up the East Coast, along the world’s longest barrier island chain.
“What strikes me is that we’ve been at this five months, but the people we meet and the Waterkeeper Alliance groups we’ve hooked up with, these people have been at it — fighting for clean water — for five years, 50 years,”Mr. Weinman says. “There is so much more we can all do.”
In fact, Mr. Weinman and Mr. Kretsinger have had some time on the water to dream up what could be their next adventure: a kayaking trip from Norway to Turkey.
“The idea would be to connect with people and organizations in Europe just like we are doing here,” says Mr. Kretsinger, outlining a route around the North Atlantic and through the Mediterranean. “We can be waterlogged messengers there, too.”
For more information, see the project’s Web site.
