By Matt Trulio

No one gets rich racing powerboats. In fact, it tends to work the other way, as powerboat racing can empty the deepest pockets. You race because you love it—perhaps obsessively. Kevin Aylesworth, who owns the San Diego-based Unlimited hydroplane Freedom Racing Team, is a perfect example. A hydro racer since age 12, Aylesworth has given everything to a sport that, two years ago, nearly claimed his life. A year later, he watched his six-race-old Unlimited hydroplane, which he purchased from outgoing team owner Ken Muscatel, go up in flames. No one would have blamed the 39-year-old Aylesworth, who owns a construction equipment company with his partner Jeff Johnson, from walking away. Yet Aylesworth remains as passionate about hydroplane racing as he ever was. We caught up with him via cell phone, just before the aircraft doors closed, on a flight to Seattle.

In 2005 you were involved in a horrific flip in an Unlimited Light hydroplane in San Diego. Tell us about it.

San Diego is always important to us, but we had never won there. So throughout the year, we worked toward winning in San Diego, trying to the get the boat to run faster with a new motor program. We raced two weeks before in Seattle and had a real good battle with the Mike's Hard Lemonade boat. We ended up a couple of boat lengths short.

We went out Sunday in San Diego, before the final round, and set a new lap record. The boat was running great. And in our race, we got paired up, again, with Mike's Hard Lemonade.

To win in boat racing, you have to be able to beat boats on the outside, so we decided to take the outside lane. We were on the back straightaway, headed toward Sea World at about 165, 170 mph. The boat was running pretty good, pretty stable all the way down the straight. But just before the corner, there were two sets of rollers from a pleasure boat.

I caught the first one, went up about 3 feet in the air, but got the boat settled. But we were at the turn, and I had to commit to turning, and as soon as I hit the second roller the boat went straight up and did a double backflip twist deal. It was up in the air a long time.

I was dead on the scene. They life-flighted me to UCSD (University of California, San Diego) hospital, which luckily took about two minutes. I spent a week there with a doctor who believed I could live.

Most of my injuries were internal. I had a dislocated shoulder and had arm, back and rib damage, but all my body parts were intact. My lungs took the majority of damage. I ended up drowning. The engine wall failed. Oil and gas came into the cockpit, and I ended up swallowing it. The body doesn't run good on that stuff. So I had lung and liver damage. I spent six months in rehab and detox from swallowing oil and fuel.

And how are you now?

I'm good, probably about 90 percent of what I was. I still go to therapy once a week for my back and shoulder. But they were convinced I wouldn't be able to race again.

About a year later, your Unlimited hydroplane burned to the waterline at the 2006 race in Seattle.

Yeah. The doctors had given me clearance about eight weeks before we had raced. I felt pretty good, I was healthy and I was excited going into Seattle. We had a great local sponsor, a company called The Plumbing Joint, join us for Seattle.

Sort of the same deal as San Diego—Sunday afternoon, we have to win to make the Final. We have a six-boat-length lead, and I'm setting up the boat for a turn at 185, 190 mph. But when I go to slow down, the boat speeds up. My guy on the radio (crew chief Kevin Braun) says, "Hey, we've got a problem, your motor just went." We weren't too concerned, we thought we just blew up a hot section, which happens.

But as soon as we slowed to 175, the boat went up in flames. And then we came to a stop.

At that point, I had to get the seat belts off and get out of the thing. Normally, that takes three or four minutes, but I got it done in 45 seconds. By then the cockpit was on fire. I opened the door to get out and flames came in so I closed it again. I still had some wires to remove before I could get out. Then I opened it again and went up through. Luckily, they require us to wear fireproof suits. But by the time it was over, the boat was completely gone.

We hired Dale Van Warrington, who built all the Budweiser boats, to build us a new one this year. We're trying to make something good out of something bad.

Do you feel a little snakebit after two major incidents in two years?

No.

Your new driver, Brian Perkins, is 21 years old. Does it make you nervous turning over the wheel to the youngest driver in the history of Unlimited hydroplane racing?

(Laughs) Absolutely, it scares me every day. But Brian has had a ton of Unlimited Light driving experience. He's been part of our team for a while. He'll be fine.

I need to take a year or two off to get my body healthy. We got back into this when I was 70 or 80 percent, and that wasn't the best thing to do. As I said, I still go to therapy once a week for my back and shoulder.

What will you do in the meantime?

Manage the team, more so than I did when I was driving. Jeff (Johnson) will take care of sponsorships, I'll take care of the day to day—make sure the team has a good boat to put in the water.

There's a charitable component to your racing efforts. How does that work?

We work with Children's Hospital in San Diego. I got started there when I was 5 years old when I had a speech problem. I met (Unlimited hydroplane legend) Bill Muncey there at a charitable event, and he got me into racing—he actually bought me my first race boat and convinced my mom and dad to help put on races. We've raised more than $100,000 for Children's Hospital in the last three years.

For 2007, the Unlimited hydroplane circuit is back to six races after some expansion last season. What happened to the growth?

You know, there are four or five other cities out there that wanted to have races this season, but we need to get them set up so they can make money at it. In years past, we had seven or eight boats with two or three boats that could win. Now we have 10 to 14 boats and six or seven that can win. That makes it much easier to get sponsorships. We'll see expansion, but getting new cities set up takes about two years. Unfortunately, it didn't happen this year.

There was such a lack of competition and leadership for so many years, so there was a downward cycle. Last year was the first in a while where crowd numbers were up at race sites. The key is that team owners understand that they can't go out and just win every time—they need to promote the sport. There are new owners coming into the sport, that's good. That's why we came onboard. This sport is on the rise.

My goal is to be able to turn on ABC's "Wide World of Sports" and see the Gold Cup. Back in the '70s, the Gold Cup was on every year. These are the world's fastest race boats. When you see boats go into a turn, side by side, at 206 mph, it's amazing.