Lobsterboat Racing History

Maine Lobster boat Racing is a large and colorful part of Maine’s coastal history. It’s Maine’s own version of NACAR, and much like it’s four wheeled cousins, it shares its roots and the essential basics.  

Earliest records of “fast lobster boats” were built for the smuggling of moonshine, does that sound familiar? From there, it changed to friendly races on who could get to the dock to unload first. Then, several different towns started their own races up and down the coast, and soon the Maine Lobster Boat Racing Association was formed.  

Today, several weekends during the summer season, racers and spectators alike, cruise the coast of Maine to participate or watch these races. Just good ole boys and girls blowing off steam, sometimes literally.  

This book will start at the very beginning and take you through the history of how this.... odd sport has come to be what it is today. You will learn the names. Like Frost, Lowell, Lincoln, Libby, Young, Holland and many others. You will learn the different hulls like Holland, Young Brothers, South Shore, Libby, Duffy, Northern Bay, and many more. The gas and diesel engines starting with the old Saginaw one lungers to the big 1600hp diesel engines of today.  

I interviewed many racers past and present in the making of this book. Each with multiple stories, some even true. I will add my own accounts of both participating and spectating.  

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed interviewing, doing the research and writing. It certainly was a time machine for me, going back to long before I existed and I hope this book helps preserve this tradition, for the generations to come. 

Now, turn your hat backward, grab the throttle and match speed with the race boat. You’re about to race! 

• History 

  Did it really start with moonshine running or is that myth? 

  What did the boats look like? How were they built? What engines? 

  When were the first official boat races happen?  

  When was the MLBRA founded? Why How? Who? 

• The many names in racing 

  Frost 

  Lowell 

  Spencer Lincoln 

  Holland 

  Young  

  Duffy 

  Wes Shute 

  Eddie Reed 

  Andy Gove 

• The Hulls 

  Young Brothers 

  Holland 

  Duffy 

  AJ 28 

  South Shore 

  Northern Bay 

  Others, modified, home built.  

• Legendary Boats 

  Red Baron 

  Sopwith Camel 1&2 

  Day Dreamer 

  Lorna R 

  Foolish Pleasure 

  Apparition 2 

• Locations 

  Boothbay Harbor 

  Rockland 

  Bass Harbor 

  Jonesport-Beals Island 

  Stonington 

  Friendship 

  Stonington 

  Winter Harbor 

  Harpswell 

  Pemaquid 

  Long Island 

  Portland 

• Section of Pictures 

• The Stories, true and false 

  Going to have to interview and email people for different short stories. 

  Me and pemaquid.  

  Marshall and the Seaway coming back in a storm 

  Sopwith Camel and Red Barron- WW2 history 

  Work boats racing- the true hero’s of the sport 

• Rules, regulations, the starts, the finish and the radar gun.  

• A description of what it’s like to take a boat down the track.  

The Finish Line 

Here you are, you have throttled down, and your heart rate is back to normal. The sensation that you are about to vomit, has passed. I hope you enjoyed your trip down the racetrack.