While a relaxing walk on the beach is easy for most who live in the area, those with disabilities might have trouble enjoying the experience due to accessibility issues. Kevin Murphy founded the Carolina Beach-based nonprofit Ocean Cure to make accessibility available to all.
“I am a physical education teacher at Carolina Beach Elementary with a love of everything water related,” Murphy said. “Ocean Cure started as a nonprofit dedicated to helping people get into the ocean and experience the joy of surfing for the first time. (It is now) a leader in the country in sheer amount of adaptive surf camps, along with a leader in the world as far as beach accessibility and what is possible with access to all for the beach and ocean.”
For Murphy, the mission of Ocean Cure is one for the whole family. “I have a 6-year-old daughter who loves volunteering for Ocean Cure; she loves to talk with our adapted athletes, help deliver beach wheelchairs and sweep the beach mats with me,” he said. “I also have a very supportive wife who supports my hundreds of volunteer hours throughout the year.”
According to ocean-cure.org, Ocean Cure’s mission is “to provide increased beach accessibility to our coast, and to help improve the quality of life for our participants through surfing.”
For more than a decade, the group has served more than a thousand participants and their families through the use of beach wheelchairs, accessible flooring and adaptive surfboards.
Today, it has 40 beach wheelchairs and more than 3,000 square feet of accessible beach matting.
“And all of that together has helped to make Carolina Beach one of the most accessible beaches in the country,” Murphy said in a video this year about the group, adding that the town’s boardwalk also is ADA accessible. “And now, we’ve opened the door for more beaches. More beaches are saying, ‘Well, if Carolina Beach is doing this, and it’s very successful, why can’t we do it?’ And we’ve kind of laid the blueprint out.”
Murphy said they’re working with some other beach areas to help them get a similar process going.
In addition to Ocean Cure, Murphy is the owner of Odysea Surf School, which was started with the idea of teaching surfing lessons in a positive learning environment.
“We have adult instructors with more than 10 years of continuous surf lesson instruction in North Carolina,” Murphy said. “The owners are avid watermen with more than 30 years of surfing and lifeguarding experience between them. We only employ the highest quality surf instructors. In fact, more than 75% of our surfing instructors are local certified schoolteachers.”
Odysea provides equipment and trained instructors who help facilitate the 40+ days of Ocean Cure Camps throughout the year.
“We are gearing up for another record-breaking season of camps, along with setting up another record of six accessible beach mats at Carolina Beach, and the longest and largest beach mat that runs parallel with the beach in the summer of 2026,” Murphy said. “We are also expanding our dragon boat camps, adding to our accessible surfboard quiver and also improving the largest supply of beach wheelchairs by a single organization on the East Coast.”
While Murphy’s nonprofit and surf school focus on Carolina Beach, his teams travel up and down the East Coast with the goal of assisting adaptive surf camps.
“Our objective is to use the ocean, the waves and the sand to help heal whatever challenges may be taking place,” Murphy said. “Whether that is for a wave or two or a lifestyle change, we serve a large variety of groups facing daily challenges throughout life with our ocean therapy programs.”
Behind these programs are families that help make it happen.
“We could not do what we do without the support of our families first and the community of Carolina Beach,” Murphy said. “The local government not only allows us to do what we do but is also very supportive in continuing to make improvements to the town facilities with Ocean Cure and ADA in mind, making Carolina Beach one of the most handicapped friendly beach towns in the country.”
