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View Full Version : Remembering Rolland "Mac" McGowan



Dave McGowan
04-05-2005, 10:10 PM
I just registered here to pass along some sad news. My father, Three-time NOA champion Rolland W. "Mac" McGowan, passed this morning (4/05/2005) after suffering from a major stroke last week.

My father was a real rule-bender in the outboard racing world of the early sixties. He often told us stories of modifications he made to the boats - some to increase their performance, and some just to mess with the heads of his competitors. He stopped spiking his fuel with nitro after nearly blinding a fellow driver in a race on the Colorado River, made a big show of using adjustable needle jets before whooping the field at one race, then going back to regular jets at the next race while everybody else tried to figure out (without much success) how to tune their own, newly-installed needle jets. There were a bunch more stories like that.

Known for wearing a bright white racing suit, he always said that it made him try to stay clean longer. He had a tight relationship with fellow-competitor Roy Rogers, and, along with Rogers and another boat-owner from Japan, raced one of three triple-Merc 21-footers sporting the first 12,000 rpm overdriven outboard surface drive lower units. When he took that boat drag racing, its leap into the air on launch was such a spectacle, the organizers started match-racing him against boats well outside his classification, just because the crowd went nuts everytime the boat leapt ten feet straight up into the air in an explosion of spray before landing, already on plane and rocketing to the finish sounding like a swarm of supercharged hornets.

He hung up his racing helmet before I was born, when he was in in his mid '40s, but I thought there might be a few historians here that might have some more pics, or some old-timers that knew him.

Pics in my gallery... if anybody wants high-res copies, conatct me. I'll be going through his old albums in the weeks ahead and adding to the gallery.

Dave McGowan

Scream And Fly
04-05-2005, 10:12 PM
Dave, I'm terribly sorry to hear about your father. It sounds like a real asset to the sport was lost.:(

I'm glad you came here to share some of those memories though.

Greg

Markus
04-08-2005, 04:57 AM
Dave, I am sad to hear that your dad passed away.

Thank you for sharing and welcome to S&F.

Dave McGowan
04-20-2005, 03:43 PM
I just added some new pics to my "Mac Attack" gallery. Some neat stuff.