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So now the 1976 OLY Pro Nationals.........
.....what a great time that was. The Midwest PowerBoat Association once again put on a fantastic nationals. It was the BiCentennial Celebration of America. The Tall Ships sailed into New York Harbor on July 4, 1976, past the Statue of Liberty, beneath the spray of the firefighting boats of New York. We raced the following month...August 17-22.
The Oly Pro Nationals was sponsored by Olympia beer. Never heard of it before, but it was a premium beer. After that I became an Olympia fan. They paid off with BiCentennial silver dollars in an Olympia beer tray. And we also got ornate Olympia beer mugs and wooden Olympia wooden beer crates with a lid.
I had won the UIM World Championships earlier that year with Marshall Grant's motor and we had seemingly corrected all motor problems when we changed out the stator plate. We won the Western Divisionals but we were having fuel problems with the larger bore motors. They were building up so much pressure in the fuel tank that the floats were popping loose, in spite of the spring loaded pressure relief ball valve on the Konig check valve. We switched to electric fuel pumps which we had unsuccessfully played with in 1967. They seemed to be more reliable and compatible with methanol now. But a month earlier in Valleyfield at the John Ward race, the fuel pump failed with a quarter of a lap to go and a big lead in the qualifying heat. That was with the 500cc motor on QUIEN SABE. I don't know whether that caused us to change something or what we did to prepare for the PRO Nationals, but looking back, I have a different outlook.
We had never gone to the Divisionals before to prequalify, but we started the year before when I was out of racing and we wanted to keep our equipment competitive. All we did at Winona was set the motor up, run a couple of tests on props and get ready for the finals. I think now, that without having to compete in a heated battle to make the finals, you don't get the feedback you need to get your boat/motor ready. In any case, we THOUGHT we were ready. This was the class I most wanted to win. To cement the World Championship with a National Championship and a competition record to boot , all in the same year....1976. It was a surveyed 1 1/4 mile course and Marshall Grant's D on SHADOWFAX was more than capable.
I can't find my notes from those days and I don't exactly remember what went wrong. I think it was fuel related, but I can't be sure. I finished 5th in heat one behind Jerry Kirts, Fred Hauenstein, Artie Lund and Howard Anderson. Maybe there were back to back heats. Forgot. In any case the following sequence tells the story. I don't know who took the photos. My sister Jan used to take pics, but she wasn't there. I can only suspect it must have been my wife Debbie, who for some reason picked up my camera to take a few shots. It doesn't matter. It shows why I raced boats.
When my motor wasn't right after I came out of the pits, I turned back just a little way down. The motor quit before I could get to the pits. It didn't matter that I was a competitor to these racing teams. They jumped through hoops to get me in the race. Bill Hosler went into the deep water to grab the bow handle. Bill Kurps grabbed Hosler to pull us in. Everyone hustled to get the boat turned around and fired up to clean it out. Bill Kurps was cranking on it, but, time ran out. The one minute gun fired. You can see the look on my mechanic Jack Chance's face as he headed back toward our pits. Of course I was extremely bummed out myself. But this was racing and in those pics you see compadres that make up what friendly competion is all about.