Thirsty Lady V.
A family-built boat, kept in the family.

Arid grew out of a boating family. Long before the first dry-bilge system, Alfred Baurley II and his son Alfred Baurley III took on the project that became the 62-foot Thirsty Lady V.

The family’s business story begins in the car trade with Alfred Baurley I, remembered in the family as an innovator who played a significant role in Oldsmobile’s growth. The family went on to operate what it remembers as New York’s largest Oldsmobile dealership before moving to Florida.

His son, Alfred Baurley II, later owned Baurley Industries, a chain of warehouses. He was technically minded and enjoyed demanding, hands-on projects. In the 1980s, a boat project in Hollywood, Florida, caught his attention from I-95. The unfinished Don Aronow plug became the starting point for Thirsty Lady V. Aronow founded Cigarette Racing Team, a name closely associated with offshore powerboating. For the Baurleys, the discovery began a new chapter on the water.

Allen Pinnell of Merritt accompanied Alfred Baurley II to inspect the hull and advised against taking on the project because it was narrow for its length. Alfred Baurley II wanted to build it anyway. He brought in Glenn Page from Merritt’s Shipyard, a boatbuilder whose craftsmanship he held in particularly high regard. Glenn played a central role in completing the boat alongside Alfred Baurley II and his son Alfred Baurley III.

The Thirsty Lady name was already part of the family’s boating life. They had owned Thirsty Lady III, a boat they had not built themselves, and carried the name forward with Thirsty Lady IV before Thirsty Lady V. For the new boat, the family recalls Wheeler-inspired ideas in the interior layout.

A shared family commitment

The project began in 1986 and continued until the boat’s launch in 1994. Alfred Baurley II brought his enthusiasm for ambitious projects; Alfred Baurley III brought marine experience and a background in programming and controls. Together with Glenn Page, they turned that commitment into a boat the family would keep for decades.

Launched in Pompano Beach

Thirsty Lady V went into the water in 1994 at Merritt’s Shipyard in Pompano Beach, Florida. The original plan was to sell her, and the family took her to several boat shows. The project had come through the early-1990s recession and luxury-tax period, when the boating market was hit hard. Alfred Baurley II’s wife wanted to keep the boat after all the work that had gone into her. The family decided to do exactly that.

The 1991 luxury tax charged 10% on the portion of a new boat’s price above $100,000. Its arrival during a recession put further pressure on boatbuilders before its repeal in 1993. Viking’s history describes severe layoffs during that period. Viking chairman Bob Healey also joined a Newport protest in which a wooden boat was burned on a barge to draw Washington’s attention to the industry’s plight. Viking’s history and its retrospective of the tax protests document that wider backdrop.

For the Baurleys, keeping Thirsty Lady V meant living with the boat and its systems year after year. That everyday experience would eventually lead to Arid.

03 / THE FIRST SYSTEM

A practical problem.
A new direction.

Years of working aboard boats gave Alfred Baurley III a close understanding of the water conventional bilge pumps leave behind. Living with that problem on Thirsty Lady V made it personal.

He began developing a way to remove residual water automatically. The family boat became the first place to put the idea to work and learn from everyday use.

From the first pilot to a product

The early installation dried areas that had stayed wet for years. It also revealed old residue that still needed cleaning—a lesson that shaped how the family explained bilge care to future customers.

Alfred spent roughly two years refining and evaluating the idea before it developed into the early product line. The purpose stayed the same: help boat owners maintain a drier bilge and recognize new leaks more easily.

The family boat continued to be a working home for the evolving system. The archive photograph above shows the original Series 9 beside Thirsty Lady V.

07 / THE NEXT GENERATION

Alfred Baurley IV joins the family business.

Years after his grandfather and father built the boat, Alfred Baurley IV found his own place in the family business.

Alfred IV had been a baby when Thirsty Lady V launched in 1994; he did not take part in the original build. His involvement came much later, when he was studying psychology, physics and athletic science in college and his father, Alfred Baurley III, asked him to join Arid Bilge Systems. He chose to leave college and work alongside his father, seeing greater potential in helping develop the family business.

What attracted him was the challenge: a changing mix of technical problems, customer needs and opportunities to grow. It was demanding, varied work that he enjoyed, with a substantial market opportunity in helping boat owners address a problem they often accepted as normal.

Over roughly 12 years with Arid, Alfred IV’s work has grown to include engineering and product development, marketing, business development, sales calls and hiring. He also creates and edits videos and writes and edits the company’s website, helping explain the technology to owners, dealers and builders.

He describes often working 14–16-hour days, seven days a week, moving between technical work, customer conversations and the practical demands of running a family company. The variety and responsibility are part of what drew him to the business. His work explaining Arid brings the story back to the original problem: water left behind in the bilge.

His decision continued a family tradition of hands-on business and technical work across four generations. His great-grandfather, Alfred Baurley I, had worked in the automotive trade. His grandfather, Alfred Baurley II, had started the boat project, and his father, Alfred Baurley III, had helped build the boat and developed the first dry-bilge systems. Alfred Baurley IV joined to help carry that work forward, improving how the company explains, presents and brings its products to owners, dealers and builders.