Reis Altinbasak of West Warwick cools off as he splashes in the water at Goddard State Memorial Park Beach last year.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

You’ve always wanted to own beachfront property. And the fact is you already do. See it this summer.

Pick a beach, any beach. You own them all.

Stride on to the sand, stand arms akimbo, perhaps impersonating Yul Brynner in The King and I, and say “Mine, all mine,” joining an enormous chorus of surf-seeking people saying the very same thing.

Don’t debate. All of you will be right, and wrong.

“No one can say, ‘This is my beach,’ ” says John Torgan, Save the Bay’s Narragansett Baykeeper. “The Bay and the shore is all of ours.”

All beaches aren’t alike. Those in Rhode Island are unlike many in nearby states, regarding quantity, quality and, most notably, accessibility.

“One of the unique things about Rhode Island that’s not shared by Massachusetts and Connecticut is the beaches belong to the public.”

It’s right there in the state constitution, Article 1, Section 17:

“The people shall continue to enjoy and freely exercise all the rights of fishery, and the privileges of the shore . . . including, but not limited to fishing from the shore, the gathering of seaweed, leaving the shore to swim.”

The gathering of seaweed?

“I think that comes from Colonial time,” Torgan says. “It’s something people did to mulch their crops.”

The point is you’re free to go to any beach to get your tan and your fertilizer. People in Massachusetts and Connecticut don’t have that freedom. Those states grant public shoreline access seaward of the tide’s mean low-water mark, according to Torgan. Rhode Island grants access to the mean high-water mark. “It’s a big difference. The mean high-water mark leaves all the beach available to walk along.”

Of course, you’ll often have to pay for your privilege and freedom in the form of parking fees. But this year especially, with gas prices around $4 a gallon, those fees might actually seem attractive compared to the cost of an out-of-state beach excursion.

“I think you’ll see a lot more day trips to the beaches and the parks in Rhode Island this summer,” says Bob Paquette, chief of the state’s Department of Parks and Recreation. “People won’t be doing long trips because of the price of gas.”

So if more Rhode Islanders are vacationing at home this summer, one might think more residents of Massachusetts and Connecticut would do the same thing. But David DePetrillo, the state’s director of tourism, doubts that.

“For residents in Connecticut, western Massachusetts and central Massachusetts, we are their ocean front. We are their beach.”

And we are the beach of choice, according to DePetrillo, who notes much of Connecticut’s shoreline is privately owned, and it’s also not the same as beaches in Rhode Island, since Connecticut is protected offshore by Long Island.

“At the Rhode Island border, the ocean really opens up. People like to see the wide open ocean and the ocean waves. It’s a great beach experience.”

The experience varies in Rhode Island, depending on your beach choice. The beaches on the state’s south shoreline are sandy with waves. And generally those on the west side of Narragansett Bay are sandy, too, according to Torgan, while those on the east side are rocky.

“It has to do with the elevation and the geologic action of the last ice age.”

Early in the season, beaches in the northern part of the Bay may be more appealing because of their shallower and therefore warmer water; later in the season, southern beaches, with their cooler water, may be more appealing.

“In the dog days of summer you want relief from the heat and go to the south shore. The upper Bay gets so warm in August, it’s like bath water.”