On board the ex-presidential yacht Honey Fitz

Why Kennedy? I ask. “Good question, because President Truman is the one that commissioned it as a presidential yacht, and of course, Eisenhower was on it, and I think Mamie Eisenhower had at least one birthday party on it that we know of, but Kennedy used it the most of any president,” he says.

It takes a rare owner to care for an attention-needy wooden boat like Honey Fitz. Modica purchased her in 2020 after her previous owner, William Kallop, had passed away. The yacht had been sitting unused and unplugged on the Okeechobee Waterway in South Florida.

She wasn’t in danger of sinking at least, as Kallop had her hull carefully restored by classic enthusiast Jim Moores of Moores Marine in a multi-year refit that ended in 2010. But her top sides had never been done properly and she needed major TLC.

“I’ve been a longtime boat lover, and this vessel has great historical significance. If we didn’t come in and do this, it would have been a situation where I’m not sure what would have happened to it, quite frankly,” Modica says.

Defoe Boat and Motor Works launched her as Lenore II in 1931 for Chicago businessman Sewell Avery, who was responsible for turning around the ailing Montgomery Ward department store chain in the early Depression years.

He used the slender 25mph diesel express cruiser as a commuter. At 28.3 metres LOA and with three en suite staterooms and crew quarters for six, she could have also cruised farther afield.

In 1942 she was requisitioned for the war effort, renamed CG 92004, and fitted with a 50-calibre machine gun on her upper deck. Following the war, she remained in the hands of the government, acting as tender to the much more grand 74.4-metre presidential yacht Williamsburg, taking President Truman ashore and shuttling secret service agents.

When President Eisenhower took office, he decommissioned the Williamsburg, deeming her “too rich” for his blood, but rather than be boat-less he sent her more modest escort to the Trumpy yard in Annapolis for a major refit.

Renamed Barbara Anne for one of Eisenhower’s granddaughters, she emerged with a flattering Trumpy-esque superstructure and more elaborate interior furnishings. However, the yacht truly came into her own during Kennedy’s term, when she was given the nickname of his maternal grandfather, Honey Fitz.

Videos and photos from that period informed the yacht’s refit, which began in early 2020. “We thought it would be a six-month project originally, and it took almost four years. That gives you an idea of the magnitude of the restoration,” Modica says.

His captain, Greg Albritton, first mate, Katelyn Kiefer, and Brad London of Total Refit managed the project. The first thing they did was to cut off the structure that had enclosed the aft deck after the Kennedy years.

“You can’t take a boat like this to a traditional yard and say, ‘Here, restore this.’ It’s impossible”

“It was all one big saloon with windows. I called it the chicken coop. I hated it. The ceiling was Formica and it was maroon and (it had) the ugliest couches you’ve ever seen in your life. It was horrible. So it would never be redone, I said, ‘Let’s get it off of here,’” Albritton recalls. Once that was removed, they brought the yacht to Riviera Beach and hauled her at Cracker Boy Boat Works, renting the paint booth next door to set up a carpentry shop.

And so began months of discovery work, removing bits to see what lay beneath and needed doing, which was “a lot.” As the project’s true scope revealed itself, they began to hire marine carpenters, compiling what they call “the dream team,” a group of like-minded artisans who worked well together. “You can’t take a boat like this to a (traditional) yard and say, ‘here, restore this.’ It’s impossible,” Albritton says.

For mate Kiefer, as work got underway, it was a race to locate historical records from the National Archives and presidential libraries to use as reference points for the carpenters — from the design Jackie Kennedy had done for the saloon sofas to the aft deck’s dovetailed teak beams. Her biggest challenge was conveying the minute details to the carpenters, down to the router bit so they could create the most authentic replicas.

“Privacy was a concern for presidents, so you’re not going to find many pictures of their bedrooms. I was fortunate to find an actual photo reference”

They took small liberties, such as hiding the saloon’s flat-screen television in a mantle with a lift, rather than bringing back the ungainly box TV of the 1960s. And in the dining saloon, they changed the curtain's colour (“I don’t think anyone would want mustard yellow curtains in their yacht,” Kiefer says).

In this room, a black US Navy rotary-dial phone sits under the forward windows, exactly as it did back then. Captain Albritton got the decorative lead glass doors on the cabinet beneath it from a 1950s Trumpy that was being scrapped on the West Coast.

Four months before his untimely demise, Kennedy had the aft deck roof cut back so he could get some sun as he lounged in his designated chair, but with the sun falling out of favour, today the roof shelters the entire deck. Along the same lines, the copious number of ashtrays in the historical photos did not make it onto the modern Honey Fitz.

What the dream team has achieved exceeds the standard of any one moment in history. “This is the best the boat has ever been,” Albritton says, as he describes the new construction that will forever stop water from getting under the side decks — a laminated one-inch plywood deck, fibreglassed and faired with a 3/8-inch teak deck.

They acquired the teak that covers these passageways and the aft deck from one of the captain’s friends whose company in Mobile, Alabama, supplies boatbuilders nationwide. “It was well before we needed teak, but before Burma was closed for import/ export. He calls me and says, ‘Greg, you’ve got to buy this; I’ve got teak that is 8.5-metres long. You’ll never find it again.’

“If you look,” Albritton says, pointing to the aft deck sole, “there are no butt joints at all on this back end.” The interior and exterior’s abundant mahogany, which gleams under 12 to 15 coats of varnish, is similarly flawless with perfectly straight grain and absolutely no knots. It came from two trees the team purchased from a nonagenarian gentleman in Ohio who had been collecting wood since he was in his twenties.

“We had an unlimited budget, and we exceeded it,” Modica says. However, he has “no regrets whatsoever. “I think it was a lot of fun. It is one of a kind, and it will last. I mean the money we put into it doesn’t have to be put in every year. Of course, the brightwork and that kind of thing has to be done, but the structural components are there for probably another 50 years or so.”

Honey Fitz’s home port is at the Pelican Club in Jupiter, Florida, where she is available for charters. Sunset cruises are the most popular. She’s USCG-certified to take out 47 guests, but the captain and mate have found that 35 is the sweet spot, with guests catered to by servers, cooks in the updated stainless steel galley and a bartender on the aft deck. Overnight charters are possible, but there is only one guest stateroom, as it was in Kennedy’s time.

It has been returned to the floor plan from the Eisenhower administration thanks to a photo Kiefer located. “Privacy was a concern for presidents, so you’re not going to find many pictures of their bedrooms. I was very fortunate to find an actual photo reference,” she says.

History came full circle this past summer when Honey Fitz, in New England for the summer, hosted the Kennedy family on board in Hyannis Port on the Fourth of July. “One of the family members was on the aft deck, and they were singing songs that Honey Fitz (the grandfather) used to sing to them. It was a really cool moment,” Kiefer says — a moment back in time.

First published in the December 2024 issue of BOAT International US Edition. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.