Originally Posted by
Master Oil Racing Team
He was running on the edge, actually on a 2" by 12 " pad at the extreme aft of the "Unlimited" bass boat. Approaching the end of the run at an estimated 119 mph the nose lifted slightly. He just touched the trim button and instantly the whole atmosphere changed as the boat launched skyward. Going from a feeling of exhilaration and relief of almost being there to a feeling of "no way out"....this is going to hurt! As the boat gained altitude, his mind was racing. Racing so fast that everything going on around him seemed in slow motion. No longer a wind tearing at his face and cheeks, but a silent, eerie feeling; the wind now blocked by the hull going forward and up until somewhere around 30 to 40 feet its flight was done and it became earthbound.
He skipped and tumbled along a surface like wet concrete with hands. Grabbing, tearing, and pulling until finally he skidded to a stop. There, laying within reach was one of his shoes....floating upside down. He started to grab the shoe, then thought better of it. Maybe a foot might still be in it. It was still too soon for the pain to set in and he had to take stock of himself. He had worn his lucky shirt that day. He still had it on. Barely. The collar was still around his neck, but the rest was hanging out the backside of his life jacket. He ended up with no broken bones, but every ligament, every muscle, every joint was pulled, twisted, torn or stretched. It was thirty days before he could get out of bed without pain.
It was 17 years after Bill Holland quit racing alkies that he took that spill. He had made a couple of successful runs the day before in the production bass boat, and that day he was going for an ulimited bass boat record. The night before he had stripped all the unneccessary items and rebalanced it for the unlimited run. When they had wired the boat, the trim switch was backwards, but Bill figured that he would be able to remember just trim it in reverse. When the boat seemed to be trimmed right and he was nearing the end of the run, he just automatically touched the trim as he normally would when the nose came up.
Bill Holland actually started racing in 1950, but he got hooked the summer before when he raced and beat some other boats with his fishing rig. Like quite a few boat racers, he was instantly drawn to speed on the water when he was out fishing one day and saw a racing boat. He beat some of them that summer with his fishing boat, and the next year he had a race boat and won his first race. It was estimated that during his racing career from 1950 to 1965 Bill won more than 500 races.
This is but one of many stories of Bill Holland's boat racing.
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