As to how long to find a block: for a pool mining Vertcoin at 1 Gh/sec, the average time between blocks is around 4 days.

Of course, it will often be less, about 2/3rds of the blocks will be less than that average. But the times it's more, will average twice that. Good luck to us all.

If we mine to the pool now, we get our share of the 50 coin award, only if the pool finds a block before the halvening.

Seeing that poolmining.org has apparently never found a VTC block, and hasn't found a Mona block for over two weeks,  I have some doubt whether a VTC block will be found before the December halvening.