Wild, Wild Ride
Before I even set foot in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, for the 2018 opening day of lobster boat racing, I am warned not to believe most, if any, of the things the racers tell me. The racers are typically men, many of them full-time fishermen, who come from all over the state to compete. The reason to keep a bullshit detector handy doesn’t stem from anything malicious. In fact, many of the racers and spectators I end up meeting are salt-of-the-earth types: generations of fishermen who have learned the trade from their parents, who learned from their parents before them.
The warning, given with a wink and a nod, is from Jon Johansen, president of the Maine Lobster Boat Racing Association. “They’re going to tell you one number,” says Johansen. “Don’t believe it.”
The number is the “theorized” horsepower of Gold Digger, an undefeated 36-foot Beal driven by Heather Thompson. Thompson happens to be one of the only female lobster boat racers, though Johansen could have easily been referring to any of the idiosyncratic pilots of the souped-up lobster boats rumbling into Boothbay Harbor, a quiet, small coastal town with a population just north of 3,000.
One of 11 fishing communities in Maine, Boothbay is the first mile-long sprint in an obscure circuit that runs from late June to the end of
