"I really wanted a landing in Holmes Beach. But I have to be realistic here. I don't see the long-term future with the hoppers."
That was Holmes Beach City Commissioner Dan Diggins in April, after the city's last real shot at a Gulf Islands Ferry stop fell apart. Not because of a vote, not because of cost overruns on the county's end, but because a private marina owner simply said no. If you live here and have been half-expecting a ferry landing to show up somewhere between the Publix and the beach accesses, it's worth understanding why that hasn't happened, and why the reason has as much to do with a crowded boat ramp as it does with any marina deal.
The ramp everyone already shares
Start with Kingfish Boat Ramp, the state-owned, county-operated launch at 752 Manatee Ave. It's the main public boat ramp inside Holmes Beach city limits, and it's been getting crowded in a way that has nothing to do with ferries.
At the Aug. 25 city commission meeting, Mayor Judy Titsworth raised the issue directly. Vehicles at Kingfish, she noted, weren't showing up with boat trailers the way they used to. They were showing up as personal watercraft rental operations and pontoon charter businesses setting up shop in a parking lot built for local trailers and recreational boaters. "We've always had local captains and fishermen picking up people there," Titsworth told the commission, "but now we've got boat rental companies moving in."
Police Chief Bill Tokajer backed that up with an enforcement detail residents may not know: charter boats are only allowed to stay tied up at the dock for 15 minutes before staff will cite them for staging. Commissioner Carol Whitmore called it what it is, a commercial business operating on public infrastructure that could affect islanders, and the discussion drew comparisons to the Palma Sola Causeway, where Tokajer said he counted roughly 50 jet skis in a single recent weekend. Titsworth added that rental vendors there simply back their trucks down to the water to make their own launch points, with, in her words, no enforcement at all.
None of that is hypothetical for anyone who's tried to launch a boat at Kingfish on a Saturday this summer. The parking lot that used to serve local boaters is now competing with commercial fleets, and city officials are still figuring out what to do about it, including whether Manatee County needs to revisit its own agreement over who regulates that stretch of Manatee Avenue.
Two tries, two dead ends
That congestion is also the reason Kingfish was never a serious contender for a ferry stop in the first place. When Manatee County went looking for a third Gulf Islands Ferry landing on the island, back in early 2026, Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau director Elliott Falcione told The Anna Maria Islander that a stop at Kingfish was "unlikely" because of what it would cost to redevelop the ramp to handle ferry traffic on top of everything already using it.
So the county pivoted to plan B: a boat slip at Waterline Marina, 5325 Marina Drive. That drew its own resistance. Residents Daria Grinenko and Dana Sky collected more than 40 signatures on a petition opposing the idea, arguing that routing ferry traffic through the marina's entrance channel would put commercial water traffic through a residential R-1 zoning district. They told the Islander they'd rather see no ferry stop at all than one that ran through that channel.
As it turned out, the petition became moot. In April, Mainsail Lodging and Development president Joe Collier, who controls the Waterline property, declined to sell the county a boat slip. Mayor Titsworth and Commissioner Diggins confirmed the decision to the Islander. Diggins didn't hide his frustration, but he also pointed out a real logistical problem with the Waterline site that had nothing to do with zoning: "If it's 49 people getting off and 49 people getting on, where do you queue all those people? There's really no place to put all the people."
Two attempts, two different failure points. One ruled out for cost before it ever got serious. The other killed by a private property owner after a public fight over where the boats would actually go. Holmes Beach is the only city on Anna Maria Island that has now tried and failed twice.
What that means if you actually want to ride the ferry
None of this makes the Gulf Islands Ferry irrelevant to Holmes Beach residents. It just means you're driving to catch it rather than walking to it.
The ferry currently runs between the Bradenton Riverwalk Pier and the Historic Bridge Street Pier in Bradenton Beach, with a newer stop recently added at Coquina Beach, on the south end of Bradenton Beach. According to Manatee County's own transit office, the boats run Wednesday through Sunday, weather permitting, with departures from the Riverwalk side starting at 7:30 a.m. and island-side service running from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. One-way adult fares currently run $7, with round trips at $11 and discounts for seniors and children.
The fleet itself has grown too. The newest vessel, the Manatee Belle, is a 91-passenger, climate-controlled boat that joined two smaller 49-passenger catamarans, the Miss Anna Maria and the Downtown Duchess, that have run the route since the service launched in 2024. County officials have said more than 55,000 passengers used the system in 2025, and estimate that ridership took roughly 23,000 car trips off area roads over the same period.
If your household actually wants to use the ferry from Holmes Beach today, the closest options are:
- Drive to the Historic Bridge Street Pier in Bradenton Beach, a few minutes south
- Drive to the newer Coquina Beach stop, also in Bradenton Beach
- Watch for the Anna Maria City Pier, which has been closed since Hurricanes Helene and Milton destroyed its walkway in October 2024 and is expected to fully reopen this fall, with a new ferry landing planned alongside it
That last one matters. Once the City Pier reopens, the Manatee Belle is expected to take over the primary Bradenton-to-Anna Maria run, freeing the two smaller catamarans to work as island hoppers between stops. Holmes Beach still won't be one of those stops. Not because the county hasn't tried, but because the two sites that made geographic sense didn't work for reasons that had nothing to do with demand.
The same ramp, two different problems
Here's the thing worth sitting with. The Kingfish congestion story and the ferry site story aren't really two stories. They're the same story told from different angles. Kingfish is the piece of public waterfront infrastructure in Holmes Beach that could most plausibly handle organized water traffic, and it's already stretched thin by commercial rental operations competing with local boaters for parking and dock time. That's precisely why the county looked past it for a ferry stop and went hunting for a private alternative instead, and precisely why that alternative collapsed the moment a private owner decided the deal wasn't worth it to him.
Whether the city ends up tightening rules at Kingfish, revisiting county jurisdiction over the causeway, or another marina site quietly enters the conversation, the underlying constraint doesn't change. Holmes Beach has less public waterfront capacity than the demand on it, and that shows up whether you're trying to park a trailer on a Saturday morning or trying to figure out why the ferry schedule still doesn't include your city.
For now, the practical answer is simple. If you want the ferry, you're driving a few minutes to Bradenton Beach. If you want to launch a boat, get to Kingfish early. And if you're the kind of person who tracks how a place actually functions day to day, not just how it photographs, this is one of those undercurrents worth watching into next year.
If questions like this, how the island actually works, what's changing on the water, what a property near a busy public ramp is really like to live with, are the kind of thing you think about before you think about square footage, that's exactly the conversation Your AMI Home Girls has every day. Reach out for a free home valuation or to schedule a consultation, and we'll talk through what's actually happening on the ground, not just what's on the listing sheet.
