PHOTOGRAPHS BY GRETA RYBUS @PopularMechanics _ July/August 2019 19
that serves as the staging area for the Pemaquid race. A guy with a
laptop asks me questions as he logs my entr y. What ma ke is the boat?
“Yamaha,” I say. Make of engine? “Yamaha, inboard,” I say. Then
the touchy question, the one nobody wants to answer straight. Race
classes are determined by horsepower, so if you’re in, say, race 13—
diesels 651 to 800 horsepower—you don’t want to stray into the next
class, which is 801 horsepower to infinity. The registrar asks me how
much power my engine has, and I reply, “One thirty...each.” He looks
up from his laptop and declares, “That’s gonna be a problem.” It’s one
of the quirks of lobster boats, and hence lobster-boat racing: You might
have 1,000 horsepower, but you only have one engine. Hell, back in
1994 they gave me crap because the Volvo had dual carbs. But we work
out an agreement wherein I’ll run in the skiff class but not claim any
prizes if I win. Fair enough. I’m not here for prizes. I’m here for glory.
The race course is a lit tle more than a quar ter-mile of open water,
demarcated with buoys, with spectators anchored on either side,
some of the boats rafted together to form makeshift party barges. A
marine patrol officer tells me that this crowd is more mellow than it
used to be—some years ago, he had to chase a guy across the rafted
boats to arrest him. Ahead of the races, I putter around to see if I
know anybody, and soon encounter my high school friend Aaron
anchoring his boat near the finish line. I tell him I feel a little out
of place without a lobster boat. “Trust me,” he says, “that Yamaha’s
hauled just as many traps as some of the boats that are racing today.”
Another guy, circling near the starting line in a skiff, calls me
out as the interloper that I am. “Why’ve you got a buoy?” he asks. He’s
referencing the lobster buoy lashed to the side of the console. Each
lobsterman has his own colors on his buoys, and you show a display
buoy on your boat so anyone can tell at a glance that you’re hauling
your own traps and not somebody else’s. I’ve got one of my father’s
old buoys—yellow, black, and orange—on the 210 FSH. So I tell the
guy in the skiff that this is my buoy, for my traps. “Your boat’s too
clean to haul traps,” he shoots back. “You’ve still got the price tag on
it.” I figure he’s busting balls until I return to the dock and see that
the Yamaha in fact has some kind of dealer inventory tag zip-tied
to the bow eye. Whoops. Amateur hour here.
Back at the dock, I tie up next to Gary Genthner, captain of the
Lisa Marie. His boat is a 34-foot Libby with a 13-liter Iveco diesel.
I ask what he’s pushing for horsepower and he says 700. Then I ask
again and, per protocol, he laughs and says, “Or maybe more like
800.” Genthner says that the overkill power isn’t just about putting
on a show at the races. Akin to how a Corvette can get 30 miles per
gallon loafing along at low rpm, the big Iveco doesn’t have to work
too hard when he’s actually out hauling traps. “I might burn 20 gal-
lons of fuel all day long when I’m just hauling,” he says. Wide open,
though, Lisa Marie does about 40 mph. You could barefoot water-
ski behind this thing, and it isn’t even in the top horsepower class.
My class is one of the first to run, and thus also one of the more
chaotic. The competitors check in the with pace boat at the far end
of the course and then attempt to remain in some semblance of a
formation as everyone pulls into position for the flying start. The
idea is that all the boats are making headway speed when the flag-
ger on the pace boat signals that the race is on, prompting everyone
to jam their throttles and speed back to the mouth of the harbor. But
it’s a goat rodeo, all of us pumped on adrenaline, and half the boats
are on plane, skimming across the water, before the flag even drops,
prompting a restart and some salty reprimands over the VHF radio.
The second time around, we get a clean start. I shove the Yama-