ANNA MARIA ISLAND, Fla. (WWSB) – After 2 years of launching the Gulf Islands Ferry, Manatee County is introducing a larger, enclosed ferry called Manatee Belle.
Tourism Director Elliott Falcione said the county added a new ferry because of customers’ feedback.
“The best thing when you start a business is that you listen to your customer, you listen to your prospective customers. So it didn’t take us long to realize that the Manatee River, sometimes based on the weather, the waters are pretty choppy and the winds pretty intense. So when you’re running two 30,000-pound pontoon catamarans, we knew pretty quickly that we needed a bigger, a little bit faster boat,” said Falcione…