Sitting in the sun, sporting comfy shorts and cool shades, Patti Peterson looks out over the picturesque blue water, squealing kids and smiling families from her station poolside.

Not a bad day at the office, really, but it’s all in a day’s work for the manager of The Pool at Pleasant Beach.

In fact, it’s just another Thursday afternoon.

The pool, which officially opened in downtown Lynwood in June, has quickly become a community staple, making Peterson – already indivisible from thoughts of aquatic sports in the minds of most islanders – the perfect person for the job. She’s taught numerous classes at the Bainbridge Island Aquatic Center and the Wing Point Country Club pool, as well as been a coach for the Bainbridge High School girls swimming and diving team for many years.

Basically, she laughed, she never really gets to dry off.

Now, with presumably a little more than a month of the new pool’s inaugural season left to go, Peterson said the first year saw some delays, some snags and whole lot of success.

All told, the pool has approximately 160 member families already, she said, and though it will remain open “until the end of September or until the weather turns to fall,” there are already plans to keep the fitness fun going through the winter at Pleasant Beach with additional exercise equipment and group activities. Construction has already begun on an upstairs cardio fitness center – consisting of aerobic machines, a stretching area and free weights – which will be available all year to pool members starting this fall.

“It’s a nice thing on the south end,” Peterson said. “Actually, we’ve had a lot of people who live down here who really like the development as a whole because there’s so much going on now and there’s so much variety of things that happen.

“It’s becoming more of a destination than just a small neighborhood,” she added.

Ironically for an island community, Peterson said, there really is not a great variety of places for people looking to swim outside, making the new pool that much more appealing for those looking to soak up some rays and make a splash over the summer.

“The aquatic center is the only public place,” she said. “There’s not a lot of different places, but [there] has been a need down here on the south end.”

Not everything this first year went swimmingly – pun intended – but on the whole the pool and its programs have proven to be a hit, Peterson said.

“It’s our first year, so there’s a lot of things that we’d like to be able to do but you don’t want to bite off too much and promise and not deliver,” she said. “So we’re delivering more than we promised, is what we’re trying to do right now.”

Offerings at the pool include small group lessons with an emphasis on individual attention, open swims (the longest on the island, Peterson said), lap-swimming times, a special children’s section with fun water fixtures and toys, lots of chairs, umbrellas and tables as well as a family picnic and barbecue area with grills and a full-service patio bar for the grownups, as well.

Though the Snack Shack and the bar were delayed — they opened three and six weeks after the pool itself, respectfully — the community’s enjoyment of the pool wasn’t hampered a bit, Peterson said. She remembered the excitement which greeted the pool’s grand opening June 1 when, right at 7 a.m., a small group of neighborhood kids gathered at the gate, determined to be the first ones in the water. Work for the manager didn’t let up that first morning when – at barely 7:30 a.m. – she found her first lost swimsuit.

“It didn’t take long to get somebody to leave their something here,” she laughed. “It was in one of the locker rooms and I was like, ‘Hmmmm, OK.'”

Peterson has overseen the selection and training of her staff of 16 lifeguards, two or three of which are on duty at any one time, plus a supervisor.

“I have a really great staff,” she said. “I coached them. A lot of them are swimmers, there are some water polo players. I already knew them, and so that was pretty easy to kind of pick and choose who I wanted to come work here.”

In fact, when she first learned of the plans to build the pool, Peterson said she knew she wanted to be involved right away.

“It is a really good fit for me,” she explained.

“I knew they were building this and with my background in aquatics and having worked at the aquatic center for a long time — I’ve just done lots of different things there — I just felt that I had the specific skill set to come and be a part of this operation,” Peterson said.

To learn more about membership prices and amenities as well as the educational programs at The Pool at Pleasant Beach, visit www.poolatpleasantbeach.com or call 206-866-6499.