The Legend of Al Grover
As kids, my brother and I spent many an aft ernoon exploring Al Grover’s High & Dry marina in Freeport, New York. We’d scour the ground for broken zincs, climb atop trailers and pretend they were battleships, and run along the shoreline like soldiers storming Normandy. Every boat and piece of scrap were pawns in our imaginary world. The name Al Grover didn’t mean anything to me then.
One summer, when I was around 10 years old, my dad gave me a book he had just finished called Against the Sea. Already an imaginative kid, I was sucked in by this compendium of the best adventure stories from the pages of the now-defunct Motorboat and Sailing. Tales of kidnappings and storms, rescues and sinkings stuck in my mind, but none as much as Polly Whithell’s story: “Across the Atlantic by Outboard. The firsthand account of a boatbuilder’s record crossing from Newfoundland to Portugal on his 26-foot skiff.” It was the story of Al Grover.
As a general rule, I don’t gush over celebrities. I don’t dream of one day meeting a performer or snapping a selfie with a professional athlete. I have to admit though, getting to meet Al Grover was as close as I’ve been to star-struck.
He didn’t disappoint.
Dressed in a short sleeve, Tommy Bahama-style fishing shirt and blue jeans, Grover, 94, seems impervious to the August aft ernoon’s heat and humidity as he invites me into his home. Stepping through the front door is like walking into a maritime museum. Interesting salty artifacts fill his living room where he settles into a floral armchair. Aviator-style glasses and a white beard that begins at his sideburns Ahab-style only hint at his age, which is impossible to predict thanks to his tack-sharp wit.
Grover’s fascination with the watery world began when he was a kid, not much older than a pair of brothers who used his marina like a jungle gym. Aft er moving to Freeport, on Long Island’s south shore, he
