The Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation has launched a $550,000 fundraising campaign to replace the Eagle Harbor Sail Float, home base for the island’s youth and community sailing programs.  

The new Sail Float will be attached to the Waterfront Park community dock. It will replace a failing, 30-year-old float that has served a generation of youth sailing programs and adult dinghy instruction.   

“The new Eagle Harbor Sail Float is about expanding youth and adult sailing,” said Mary Meier, Parks & Trails Foundation Executive Director. “It brings sailing opportunities to more kids and families who would not otherwise have access to sailboats or sailing.”  

The Eagle Harbor Sail Float – a floating platform where dinghies and other small sailing craft are stored and launched – is essential to the youth and adult sailing programs of the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District. Park District sailing programs currently serve more than 800 youths and 75 adults each year.   

The new Sail Float is a safe, ecological, and ADA‑accessible design with essential features such as lighting and secure storage. Its Waterfront Park location is close to the Bainbridge schools central campuses for after-school program access.  

In addition to being a launch pad for youth camps, adult dinghy classes, family boat checkouts, and the high school sailing team’s practices, future possibilities for the new float could include adaptive sailing, powerboat instruction, and docking space for the Park District’s adult keelboat classes. 

“Everyone in our island community should have convenient access to sailing instruction, and the new Eagle Harbor Sail Float is critical for the Park District’s sailing program,” says Haley Lhamon, long-time instructor and youth sailing coach. “The District’s sailing camps and classes have positively impacted countless youths and adults by fostering lifelong skills, friendships among new and experienced boaters, passion that can lead to amazing cruising adventures or racing, and connection to the marine environment.” 

Total cost for the Eagle Harbor Sail Float project is $1.9 million. The Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation is raising the final $550,000, with approximately $1.5 million in funding already secured from Washington state and local sources.  

When John DeMeyer built the first community sail float in the late 1980s, he didn't expect it to still be there 35 years later. Cobbled together by DeMeyer and volunteers using home center-grade materials, the float was a temporary fix at best.   

"It was not intended to be a long-term solution," he says. "It was just intended to get a sailing program going."  

DeMeyer, at that time a recreation manager with the Bainbridge Island Park & Recreation District and an avid sailor, was hearing from students who wanted to form a sailing club. He put a notice in a Bainbridge High School bulletin: "Anyone interested in a forming a sailing team, come to room 202 after school." Thirty-five students showed up.   

There were only two problems: there were no boats, and no place to sail from.  

DeMeyer secured a boating safety grant through Washington State Parks, then enlisted student volunteers and park staff to build a modest floating dock.  

Using off-the-shelf materials – "not Space Age stuff, basically what you could get at Home Depot" – they built six modular sections, each measuring 5 by 10 feet. The sections were built offsite, trucked to Winslow's Waterfront Park, and assembled on the beach at low tide before being floated out to anchor offshore from the park.   

The humble platform was enough for DeMeyer to launch a summer sailing class with borrowed boats. But the program grew, and over the years the Park District added sailing classes for youths and adults and purchased boats, Bainbridge High School welcomed sailing as a highly popular club sport, and the nonprofit Friends of BHS Sailing formed to fundraise for club activities.  

A generation of young people have learned to sail from the float, many going on to compete in college and returning as instructors, coaches, and mentors.   

"There's a lot of lifelong sailors out there," DeMeyer says. "They're adults now, having kids of their own. A lot of it started out there on that float."  

The float has been upgraded and patched up through the years, functional if increasingly saggy. But after more than three decades in the tough marine environment, it has finally reached the end of its useful life.   

The new Eagle Harbor Sail Float would replace the old platform with a modern, permanent facility connected to the Waterfront Park dock. Designed to current safety standards for long-term use, it would secure the future of Bainbridge Island community sailing and expand opportunities for youths and adults alike.  

"It would mean a sense of permanence for the program," DeMeyer says.  

Bainbridge Island’s youth and community sailing programs are thriving, instilling hundreds of young sailors each year with confidence, teamwork, and lifelong maritime skills. Give today to support the new Eagle Harbor Sail Float — a critical facility that ensures access to safe, accessible, and high‑quality learning.

Eight-hundred or more  youths participate in the Bainbridge Metro Parks Sailing Program annually, with almost half launching from Eagle Harbor. This float is central to their experience, providing a place where students from elementary through high school learn to sail, build friendships, and grow through hands‑on adventure. 

The current float (30 years old) has reached the end of its usable life, and replacing it is essential to sustaining and expanding youth sailing programs. Give today to build the new Eagle Harbor Sail Float and support sailing instruction for all.

The existing sail float was built 30 years ago and added to over time, cobbled together with additional floats that were replaced at the nearby City Dock. Never expected to last as long as it has, the float is decrepit and beyond its safe, useful life.