A kayaker paddled past Quidnessett Country Club on Narragansett Bay and noticed something new. A stone wall, 20 feet tall and two football fields long, standing on a public shoreline. No permit.
The club had a reason, as rule-breakers usually do. Its signature 526-yard, par-5 14th hole has been crawling toward the water for years. That stretch of coast has surrendered about 50 feet in three decades.
The club asked Rhode Island for a seawall back in 2012. The state said no. The club then tried giant sand-filled “burritos,” and the 2022 storms ate them. So one quiet winter, up went the wall.
The attorney general reached for the words “willful, reckless, or wicked.” That is not a phrase you usually hear on a par 5.
A 363-year-old catch
Rhode Island’s constitution descends from a royal charter King Charles II granted in 1663. It guarantees the public’s right to the shoreline — to swim, to fish, and, in one of law’s great specifics, to gather seaweed.
There is a physics problem, too. A seawall protects the land behind it partly by shoving wave energy at the unarmored shore next door. Your wall can quietly become your neighbor’s erosion.
So the “ask forgiveness” strategy has now bought the club 999 days of litigation. There is a real chance it will be ordered to tear the whole thing out at its own expense. The wall that was supposed to save the 14th hole may end up costing it twice.
The club’s story is every coastal owner’s story on fast-forward. Ask permission. Get denied. Improvise. Lose the improvisation to a storm. Build anyway. Each step felt reasonable, and the total is a courtroom.
Your own shoreline
Underneath the comedy is a property lesson worth keeping. If you own something the ocean wants, defending it is now its own standing line item in the plan.
Start with the policy. Standard homeowners insurance often covers none of this — not flood, not erosion, not armoring, which is the industry’s word for walls and barriers. Read yours and find out where the coverage actually stops.
Then learn your state’s shoreline rules before you need them, not after. Every coastal state has its own version of Rhode Island’s charter, and none of them enjoy surprises.
Finally, budget the whole stack — walls, insurance, permits, lawyers — the way you already budget property tax. It is not glamorous. Neither is a demolition order.
If that list sounds expensive, it is. It is still cheaper than 999 days of lawyers.
Before the crane arrives
The sea is patient and the state is well-documented. The cheap time to deal with either one is before the crane shows up at midnight.
You do not need a kayaker to spot your own exposure. Pull the policy, note where the coverage stops, and check whether your plan carries those defense costs or just hopes for calm weather.
That is a 15-minute look with a statement in hand. It is a lot easier than explaining the wall after the storm.