Barry - I would love to try sandals, but I have prescription orthotics, without which my feet hurt a lot. No sandal I have found (and I did some looking) will allow me to use my orthotics, and none has a footbed shaped anything like my orthotics. If you know of any sandals that will aloow me to use my orthotics, I'd love to hear about them.
I agree that the sprintaquatics shoes will be less than ideal, but they seem like a big step up from barefoot, and at 2 oz for the pair not much to carry. Plus being useful for recreational wading as well.
I'm also considering the idea that I just need to change to thinner socks, as it seems that the folks who are having success wading streams in their trail runners and socks and not stopping are using thinner socks than I am. so that might be the ticket, I'll have to give it a try.