Missing prj file for Meerkat

With Nathan Lowe's considerable help I have extracted contour elevations for the Newport region of Rhode Island's coast.  I realize now that there is no water's edge data (zero elevation) in the contour line files. when I download the RI coastline files (ribay.zip on http://www.edc.uri.edu/rigis/data/data.aspx?ISO=boundaries) there is no prj file in the dataset.  Is there a way to trick Meerkat so that I can use the shapefile? There is also data in an ESRI format, so perhaps there a a way to get at the info that way.