Finding Grandpa's Boat
Freeport Historic Photographs, Freeport Historical Society, Freeport Historic Photographs,
Freeport Historical Society & Museum, 2008-08-20. “Verity & Van Nostrand Sea Food Shack”
https://cdm16694.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15281coll12/id/2471/rec/29
Confession to my assistors: I stall hate smoked eels.
For over four decades, I deeply desired to find my grandfather's last Verity skiff. Time was running out. I own a corporation that takes up a good amount of my time. I was also at the point where I had the energy to do one more "full" multi-year boat restoration. I am a forty-year-old stuck in a 62-year-old body.
The search included boating forums, old boat listing sites, and walking marinas looking at boneyard boats, hoping to find "her." I searched newspaper classified ads to put together the few things I had to go on. Oddly, the classifieds turned out to be a study of size, power, and configurations over a 114-year time frame. The oldest information I found was in a 1910 Motor Boat magazine.
One key source should have been my dad. But his stories grew in size as I got older. Luckily, my godfather William Wright, an aviation engineer, was a great help. The skiff for which we looked for together was a 24-footer, with helm steering on the port (left) side and dual front port holes forward. The skiff was a powerhouse.
There was a "Seaford Channel Raider" which I always had my eyes on. That boat was being posted on forums. However, it was being marketed as a "Jersey Skiff." The "Seaford Channel Raider" (shown below) had a nameplate saying "WILLIAMS MARINA." The most damming information about that boat was Grandpa died three years earlier.
The 1964 skiff has Verity lines in so many ways.
In the above January, 1962 Motor Boating magazine ad showed the 1964 boat which put the Channel Raider's real age in question.
These advertisements always stated "Refined by the same builders for over 50 years".
The team at Woodies Restoration, replaced her gas lines and tank. They also made sure she was well soaked before moving the skiff. We did not want loose fasteners moving around for the 8- hour drive home.
The video below is of a cold engine start.
Once we had her home we found her build plate.
She is a Verity Skiff, built in 1961. The L stands for Louis, my Grandpa. Hull number LV6124. If I did not need it in the boat it would be on my office wall.