The Bar on Stilts in the Middle of the Sea: Floyd's Pelican Bar

A friend showed me pictures of Floyd’s Pelican Bar years before I ever set foot in Jamaica, and it went straight to the top of my bucket list. A driftwood shack built on stilts, standing on a sandbar a quarter-mile out in the sea, reachable only by boat. It didn’t look real. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

A few years later, we were finally on the drive there — and the drive is part of the story. We’d hired a local driver to take us to all the spots the resorts don’t put on their day-tour menus, and that was absolutely the way to do it. This one lived in the backseat of a Toyota Camry, windows down, a little scared out of our minds by the driving and completely giddy about where we were headed. If you’re staying up on the Montego Bay side like most people do, know going in that Pelican Bar is down on the south coast, near Black River — it’s a real day trip, not a quick afternoon jaunt. Hire a driver who knows the road and lean into it. Half the magic is getting there.

We parked and walked a short distance to a wooden boat, and our driver took us out himself. The water opens up, the colorful boats bob around you, and then the bar just appears — a lopsided little structure standing on legs in the middle of nowhere. You climb out into water shallow enough to wade in. That’s the thing nobody quite prepares you for: you can stand waist-deep beside the bar for hours, drink in hand, or climb up onto the deck and lie in the sun with the whole sea around you. There’s no rush to be anywhere.

We ordered fresh fried fish and — from what I remember — a rum punch, and that was the whole afternoon. Simple, unhurried, exactly what it should be. I was hooked before we even left; I wanted to turn the boat around and go back the same day. The whole place is built from weathered planks that people have been carving their names into for years, and a boy named Anthony took a moment to carve our initials into the wood alongside everyone else’s. It’s a small thing — the kind that makes a place stick to you. For a little while, our names were part of the bar.

In late 2025, Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica’s south coast head-on and took the whole thing out — every plank, gone.

Floyd Forbes rebuilt it. Plank by plank, with a lot of help — including a hand from Red Stripe — the bar reopened at the end of January 2026 under a fitting “Southside Resurrection” banner. I haven’t been back since it came back, but by every account it’s up and running again, and I’d expect it to keep growing and changing the way it always has.

Go. Support the Pelican Bar, tip well, and take your time. The people are wonderful and it’s genuinely one of those experiences that reorganizes what you thought a bar — or a beach day — could be. If you’re on the Montego Bay side and don’t want to sort out the drive yourself, this private tour runs straight there and back — the easiest way to build the whole south-coast day around it.

It took me years to get to Floyd’s Pelican Bar. I’d get on a plane tomorrow to do it again.

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