We see so many visitors and families engage in beach combing and the hope of finding a "real" float and the nostalgia of classic beach combing memories. We have worked with our expert "float fairies" and "wranglers" on strategies to get the bulk of the floats to land across a short window of the South Beach. As Washington's Original Beach Town, Westport is the first and only real float event that gets people onto the beaches like the old days and a chance to take home an actual Japanese glass float find.

The Maritime Museum uses real floats, most recently from Japan and imported back to the USA. These are actual working floats as opposed to decorative thin-skinned art floats. Most floats are shades of green because that is the color of glass from recycled sake bottles, as has been the tradition in Japan. These heavy glass floats are survivors and not prone to breakage. The floats are hand etched with "WSBHS 2025" to identify floats released from the program as opposed to what we refer to as "Truly Wild" floats that are still found with regularity by lucky beach combers. I am one of the folks who engrave our floats for #wildfloats and #ExperienceWestport.

We encourage everyone to share their finds through social media and to make sure to use hashtags #wildfloats and #Experiencewestport. Visitors who want to learn more about beach combing can visit the Maritime Museum and check out our collection of South Beach combed floats and unique collector floats.

There is some #Wildfloat etiquette, the principal being, please do not hog floats. The nature of a wild release means that occasionally they will bunch up. If you find several, please set one as your bag limit and leave some for others to discover. The program's goal is to share the experience and stories with our visitors.