Bernie Van Osdale

Bernie Van Osdale, in the green shirt, and his wife, Cindy, watching the action during Mahogany and Merlot on Sunday, October 4, 2026.  Photo by Craig Fjarlie

Racer Profile: Bernie Van Osdale

By Craig Fjarlie

Bernie Van Osdale, of River Falls, Wisconsin, was born into a racing family. His father and grandfather raced outboards. Bernie raced outboards from 1976 through 2009.

The first weekend of October 2026, he made a trip to Lake Chelan, Washington, for the vintage event Mahogany and Merlot. There he went for a ride in the replica Miss Thriftway Unlimited hydroplane. His wife, Cindy, traveled with him and also went for a ride in a vintage Unlimited. Bernie granted an interview about his racing on Sunday, October 4.

“I was born back in the last century,” he says with a laugh, adding, “1945, which makes me fairly old. My dad was stationed at an air base in Florida. He got to hanging around with a bunch of guys who raced boats in those days. While there weren’t a lot of organized races, the locals did race around there. He got involved in that sort of thing in 1946, I think. From ‘46 through ‘53 he raced C Service and PR Runabouts. Started with a Pen Yann. He built his runabout from 1935 Crandall plans—Crandall runabouts from California. Did fairly well in Michigan and Ohio. He never raced the Nationals.”

Bernie’s father raced in a number of classes. “He ran ER, then he raced SR, which is a B,” Bernie remembers. “In the Service class he raced a PO.”

Tragedy struck in 1953. Bernie’s father had gone to Florida to pick up engine parts for a PR. On the way home, he was killed in an automobile accident. In the back seat of the car, he had new Wes Jones cylinder heads. “They had been machined and all that stuff,” Bernie explains. “That’s why I started racing PR.”

Before he was old enough to race, Bernie would travel from his home in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to Detroit to watch the Unlimited hydroplane races. “One of my favorite boats at that time was Miss Thriftway.” That is why he specifically wanted to have a ride in the replica during this year’s Mahogany and Merlot. For a number ofyears, he worked as a city manager in northern Michigan. It is also where he met his wife.

One day, Bernie stopped at a gas station. He tells how one thing led to another. “A guy is loading up his race boats, Stock stuff, you know? Stock people and alky people are two different kinds of racers. We didn’t play with each other,” he admits with a laugh. “It happened that the guy who owned the gas station was named Ed Thirlby. He got me in contact with Karl Williams, and I ordered two C Service Speeditwins. My first race was the Nationals in 1976. I raced every year since then until 2009.”

Bernie met racers from Canada who helped him with mechanical work. “The guy in Canada who built my engines was named Stan MacDonald. Stan was one of the greatest machinists.” Bernie raced in Canada as well as in the United States. “I did win two Nationals up there, ’78 and ’79. Got beat pretty badly in 1980.” He raced C Service Runabout in the U.S. Nationals at DePue, Illinois, and had a surprise win. “We were still racing two heats in Service Runabouts,” he explains. “We still had the old rules. I did win that race. I finished second and fourth. A whole bunch of those guys jumped the gun. I had just put my engine away and they said, ‘Bernie Van Osdale won the National Championship.’ What? I was the most surprised in the world.”

Bernie has strong feelings toward the Johnson PR engines that power boats in the C Service class. He used the Wes Jones cylinders that were in his father’s car at the time of his accident. “I had those cylinders put on it and it was a very good engine. I raced it for many, many years. I only had two PRs. One was very good; the other one I didn’t know so much about.”

He enjoys telling the history of the PR engines. “Johnson had external rotary valve engines. The C Service was really a service engine built in 1930, originally. It was a stock service motor. Over the years, the guys liked it. They started modifying it; all of a sudden they became full race engines. Nobody really thought that was the intention. They tried to get rid of it but they couldn’t. Actually, they have been trying to kill that motor for the last 50 years and they still haven’t been able to, because generation after generation just fell in love with that old motor. The factory stopped building them in 1930 or ’31. They had tons of different parts. ” He digresses for a moment. “The SR, the B, they ran that a little bit longer but by the beginning of the war there were no more engines. After the war, Johnson did not get back into racing. So, boat racers all over the country were machinists of one sort or another. They would build parts for them. A guy named Randolph Hubble made parts. There were crankcases, but they were a little tough to come by. You could build an engine right up today if you wanted to. Today, it would probably cost you about $5,000 to modify one. But they still run—you can’t kill them.”

During his years in racing, Bernie had a strong preference for runabout hulls. When asked if he ever drove hydroplanes, he gives a straightforward answer. “I did, but I don’t like ’em.”

In 2009, Bernie was participating in a race when an incident forced him to reconsider his involvement. “I was 64 (years old). Coming down the straightaway, I got a pretty bad start. This guy in front of me, I knew I could beat him. I hung tight on the outside going into the first turn. The problem was that I hit his wash. It just threw me up in the air. I thought the boat was going over and everything else, but it landed right-side up. They gave me a 9.5 when I landed,” he says, with a hint of a laugh. But, “I pretty much lost interest. I said, ‘I don’t think I want to do this anymore.'”

Although he is no longer an active racer, Bernie remains involved. He owned boats that others drove and has helped as an official. In 2012, he drew on his vast collection of photos and artifacts from outboard racing and wrote a book, Vintage Outboard Motorboat Racing, an Illustrated History 1927-1959. Paul Wearly wrote the introduction. The book was published by Enthusiast Books.

Bernie offers special thanks to Gloria Urbin and Cindy Minoletti at APBA for their help in finding historical records. The book is a treasure for anyone interested in the early development of outboard racing.

Bernie Van Osdale is respected by outboard racers who knew him when he was an active racer, and those who have only heard of his storied involvement. He is one of boat racing’s living legends.

(L-R) Steve Greaves, Bernie Van Osdale, Jack Campbell