‘Gill’s in the Bay’

With diners basking in the sun on the deck over their crab sandwiches and clam chowder, it’s hard to imagine the lawn, ramp and parking lot of Gill’s by the Bay underwater and the tide sloshing at the boards beneath their feet. But when the King Tide came in Jan. 2, hunks of sun-bleached whale bone that act as garden borders were submerged once again, and the rowboat on the grass was adrift. Brent Freitas, who runs the crab shack adjacent to his family’s restaurant, says, “It was ‘Gill’s in the bay.’” 

It wasn’t, however, a total surprise. Sitting at a table in the back of the dining room, Freitas flips through photos of flooding that date back to the 1990s. “Every year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s,” he says, “we have a series of about three high tides that affect us.” Usually, they leave the parking lot flooded, but every five or six years, “a big one” comes along to soak the storerooms and office, which are a little lower than the dining room and kitchen. After losing refrigerators and freezers, they raised their equipment and storage room shelving 2 feet off the ground, stacking the expensive stock highest. 

This year, the shelving held, and they only lost some potatoes and other cheaper goods on the lower shelves, but it’s the highest the water has ever gotten. While the kitchen and dining room were spared, the office, he says, was under 2 feet of water and the restaurant had to close for three extra days, which meant lost revenue for the restaurant and loss of wages and tips for employees. Freitas estimates around $2,500 in physical damage, including to the refrigerator in the crab shack, but figures if they hadn’t raised their equipment and stock off the ground, it might have gone as high as $10,000.

“This was kind of the perfect storm — high tides, low barometric pressure and the rain didn’t help.” Though it could have been worse. If the storm had been stronger, he says, “We woulda had waves comin’ in the windows.”

Family and employees came in, as usual, to “roll up our sleeves,” clearing, cleaning and “re-sanitizing from the roof down,” says Freitas. Staff have the option to take the closed days off or clean and get paid. Drying out the walls and floors takes a couple days, and moving larger items back into place sometimes means waiting for the tide to return and help lift driftwood and other flotsam — this year that included an old section of boardwalk that broke loose.

“It’s ‘learn and adapt,’ especially when you live out here on the coast,” says Freitas with a shrug.

Against one wall inside the crab shack squats a Toledo industrial scale from the 1940s with a round, glass-domed face that reads, “Honest Weight.” While no longer in use, it’s the oldest in the county that still passes certification, says Freitas, and the recent flooding put its entire platform under the water. The black and white photo of whalers working on a massive carcass hanging above the scale is a relic of the Freitas family’s history on the bay, which includes Freitas’ grandfather Bennie Gill working at the whaling station in Fields Landing as a child in the 1930s.  

After running the Whaler’s Inn in Field’s Landing (from whence the chowder recipe at Gill’s hails), Gill bought the dilapidated building that now houses Gill’s by the Bay in 1989. Back then, says Freitas, it was a “burnt out shell of a building; the plumbing had all been stripped out,” and “anything worth stealing” was gone. “Everyone thought he was crazy, but he had a vision.” 

Freitas expects to see new high water marks in the future. “Who knows, maybe we’re gonna get a 10-footer. Maybe that’s the new normal,” he says, though he expects the restaurant will be gone by the time sea-level rise covers the property with water.

Asked why he stays year after year and flood after flood, Freitas gestures to the window facing the bay. “Where can you come to work and look out and see all this?”

Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106 or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky and Instagram @JFumikoCahill.

This article appears in After the Flooding.