The Point Baker Floating Bar

Being a roadless community meant more than just everyone having to get around by skiff instead of pickup truck. At Point Baker it mean that the bar/general store was floating - actually built on a raft of big cedar logs - as was the Post Office on the other side of the harbor. The Post Office even had a little store in it, operated by the postmistress’s husband. He had a modest selection - paper towels, a few canned goods, onions or apples if you were lucky.
Plus - and this was a big one - the bartender was also the fish buyer, so if you wanted to you could sell your fish for bar credit, and head right over to the bar to put your fish money to work, pronto! Another thing that made the bar so popular with commercial fishermen - other than the fact that it was literally only a hundred yards from some very productive fishing grounds - was no ramp! To get to most shoreside bars from a boat after you tie up, you have to walk up or down (depending on the tide) a long ramp. Say you come in from a good fishing trip at high tide and want to hoist a few to celebrate. There are some friends there and you all spend a few delightful hours talking about fishing and life in general. Then, pretty well lit, you step outside and have to now face a steep and slippery ramp down to get back down to your boat. But at Point Baker: no ramp: no matter whether the tide is up or down, your boat is at the same level as the bar.
Of course, being floating brings its own issues. On a Saturday night, for instance, when the bar got crowded, they didn’t need one of those “Maximum capacity 25” etc. you see in some places. At the Point Baker Floating Bar, when water started coming up through the floor, it meant that the bartender was going to as for the first people who came in to now depart….
Drink selection could be a bit limited as well. One evening this fancy power yacht pulled into the harbor and tied up and a well dressed couple headed into the bar, hoping to wet their whistles after a long run up from Ketchikan.
“Any chance of a Manhatten…?” asked the man, looking around doubtfully at the dimly lit room, “Or how about a whiskey sour?” asked the woman.
“Look,” said the bartender, putting a fist the size of an 8 pound ham on the counter, “We got whiskey and water, whiskey and coke, and whiskey and Tang. And.. we save the ice for the fish….”
I remember the first night my wife and I tied our commercial salmon gillnetter up to the float. It was a black rainy night, and I headed up the dock towards the ramp with my dog. But as I passed what I thought was a pile of trash on the dock, something grabbed my leg and I stopped, and startled, looked down. The hand that had grabbed my leg was now holding up an pint of vodka.
“Want a little nip, sonny? I recognized the voice of one of my neighbors, having a little rest on the float before he headed home!