The boat was a gift from his grandmother. He had received it about three weeks before the race. Since that time, he had been skimming the water of Liberty Lake where his family had a lake home. He also practiced at Coeur d'Alene Lake preparing for the event. 

In a 2001 interview, Jim McGoldrick remembers his uncle advocating for him: "Uncle Ed went to Grandma and said, ‘This boy is old enough to have a boat, he needs a boat, he deserves to have a boat.'" 

His grandma agreed, but when they got to the lake with the Yandt 16-foot runabout with its Evinrude Speedy Twin outboard motor, his mother wasn't so sure. She did not want him getting hurt, but she okayed it after making him promise to wear his kapok life preserver and to be careful. Fittingly, he named the boat "Ma's Worry."

With his family's history in boats, it wasn't surprising young Jimmy would become a boat enthusiast. It all started in 1910, when his Uncle Ed hitched a team of horses to his launch to bring the "Mary Lucille" to Liberty Lake for the McGoldrick family's first summer on Wicomico Beach. Sporting a two-cylinder, two-cycle Gray Marine engine, Ed entered the "Mary Lucille" in that August launch race. Enthusiasm built as A.E. Gallagher's boat (the multiple silver cup winner, "Killarney") now had competition. Unfortunately, when race day came, weather conditions were not good; the water was unusually rough on the west side of the course. Not favorable for fast time, the "Mary Lucille" and "Killarney" were withdrawn from the race. Though disappointed, Jim's Uncle Ed was now turned on to the sport of boat racing.

The McGoldrick family, supporting Ed with his new passion, traveled to Portland, Ore. The Willamette and Columbia rivers near the city were fast becoming a hot spot for motorboat racing on the West Coast. There, they saw boats sporting the latest in hulls designed to displace less water, moving the boat faster. They came home with a three-cylinder launch, the "Comet," which had been successful in the river races. Ed entered the boat in Liberty Lake's 1912 Regatta and brought home top honors and a silver cup.

If having a family legacy wasn't enough to create a fascination in motor boating, the McGoldrick's neighbor at Liberty Lake was. Joe Pedicord, a gold cup hydroplane racer, had a summer home next door. Many years his senior, Pedicord enjoyed the young McGoldrick's help with everything boats and motors.  He was a pioneer in the home building of speedboats, naming them the "Peddy Boy," "Peddy Boy II" and the "Peddy Boy Junior." 

Like Joe Pedicord, whose boat names started the same and ended with which edition it was, Jimmy's first boat was followed by Ma's Worry II, III and IV. As Jimmy was skipping over the waves of Liberty Lake, it wasn't just his mother who was paying attention to his boating abilities. This author had an opportunity to visit with Jim and his wife of 72 years, Milaine, in the summer of 2012. She explained that her parents, Scott and Edith Jones, also had a summer home along Wicomico Beach when she was growing up. Jim was a few years her senior, but she knew who he was and observed from a distance his love of boating. They became high school sweethearts at Lewis & Clark in Spokane and married about six years later in 1940. 

Both very active in various pursuits, they shared the passions of boating as well as flying, with each being a licensed pilot. Together, they acquired a vintage boat collection equaled by few but envied by many. Both Jim and Milaine are gone, Jim in 2012 and Milaine last year. What began at Liberty Lake, then Coeur d'Alene Lake and the Pend Oreille River continues today with their family - a love and appreciation of boats and those who taught them how.

• The McGoldrick Family owned the McGoldrick Lumber Mill, one of Spokane's largest employers in the early to mid-1900s.

• Jim McGoldrick's grandfather, J.P., the family patriarch whom Jim was named after, was one of the original 50 investors in the Northwest-based General Insurance Company of America, which formed Safeco Insurance. Today, Safeco Insurance, along with its parent company Liberty Mutual, is one of Liberty Lake's largest employers. 

• Milaine McGoldrick's grandfather, Arthur D. Jones, at one time owned nearly all the land between Liberty Lake's north shore and the current location of the Liberty Lake Fire Station. The north side was commonly called Jones' Beach.

• Conkling Park was a well-known resort at the head of Coeur d'Alene Lake near the mouth of the St Joe River.

• For more than 50 years, the lakefront where the Coeur d'Alene Resort now stands was home to the Yandt Boat Works. Starting in 1915, they built over 75 boats specializing in fast runabouts and the water taxi trade.

• Before 1900, life jackets were made from cork and balsa. After that, a material called kapok became popular as the fill material for life vests. Kapok is a vegetable fiber found in tropical tree pods. The kapok fiber was sealed in plastic packets to prevent exposure to water.

• The Liberty Lake Motor Boat Club held the first races of its kind in 1907 at the lake. The course went around the lake, covering four to five miles. These boats, commonly called launches, were capable of speeds up to 10 miles per hour. The race entries were made up of the resort touring boats and resident-owned launches. The race was handicapped as to allow a fair but competitive race. The handicap allowed race officials to compensate for fast or slow boats in final results and to award the race to the boat with the highest achievement rather than the quickest time. The motorboat club awarded silver cups to the top three finishers. On an unusually rough day, as was experienced in August of 1910, the scratch boats, those with no handicap, would have a hard time winning even though they crossed the finish line first.