When did they start racing lobsterboats in Maine? Well, it depends on who you ask. As far as official events go, the Jonesport-Beals races, organized by boatbuilder Bert Frost in 1964 to crown the “World’s Fastest Lobster Boat,” are often noted—although if you dig into history from the area, boats were racing on Moosabec Reach and elsewhere long, long before that.
The truth is some version of this: Lobsterboat racing began the very first time two fishermen were in sight of each other, headed in the same direction.
And no trophies were involved.
In the case of one island family, I guess you could blame Vinalhaven, Maine, lobsterman David Osgood for the racing bug that eventually infected three generations of his family that includes his father Alfred, who turns 83 this year, and his 32-year-old son, Steven.
Though David, 63, grew up on the water, much of that time was spent aboard his father’s lobster and purse seine boats that were 9-knot vessels. (“If that,” said Alfred, with an eye roll and a chuckle.) Somewhere along the way, however, David developed a passion for speed. And never mind the pleasure boats that visited Vinalhaven’s Carvers Harbor during the summer; it was the working-boat hull designs birthed right here on the Maine coast that captured his fancy.
David remembered being at the Jonesport-Beals lobsterboat races in his late teens with a Super 8 camera, shooting film of the “World’s Fastest Lobster Boat” races one 4th of July.
“That was back in 1980, I think, when the big rivalry was between the Young Brothers from Corea and Holland’s Boat Shop in Belfast,” David said. “The Youngs had their 33-foot Ulrika and Glenn Holland brought his 32-foot Red Baron to town—both of them with big-block gas engines.” He grinned. “Now, that was a show.
“Were they doing much over 30 back then? I don’t know,” David said. “But for the time, they were flying.”
When David speaks of that day from 46 years ago, you can still hear the appreciation he had for a couple of slick-sailing hulls slicing up Moosabec Reach, their V-8 powerplants roaring through straight pipes. At that point in time, going back home to Vinalhaven meant returning to a 9-knot cruising speed. But there were definitely faster times in his family’s future.
When I came ashore from fishing and began working at Commercial Fisheries News in 1988, I was asked about covering the summer lobsterboat races, which I’d never attended. While fishing, we were usually making trips offshore and didn’t pay attention to the weekend gatherings.
Back then, there were a half-dozen or so organized events. When I began reporting about them, I got really confused early on when I realized the classes and/or rules were different from town to town on the race circuit. A boat that cleaned house at one location might be deemed illegal to race the following weekend somewhere else, without changing a thing.
That was the original inspiration for Commercial Fishing News working to help institute uniform classes and a points system to determine season champs in each class.
Eventually, the Maine Lobster Boat Racing Association was formed to become the overseer of the sport. MLBRA currently hosts 11 events (10 venues, plus Pemaquid, which is non-points and has its own classes) along the Maine coast. See sidebar page 47 for dates.
Mention Alfred Osgood’s name in about any New England fishing port and the likely reaction will be a story about his uncanny ability to hunt down schools of herring and shut them off in the middle of the night (the term seiners use for corralling and trapping herring in their nets), often in places where most people wouldn’t want to idle through, let alone set out a purse seine.
His success was more than just bravado and skill; the man was and is a driver—a worker who pushes himself as hard as he expects of his crew. I remember Alfred trying his hand at offshore lobstering in the late 1970s, joining us down in the lower end of Crowell Basin. He had the 46-foot Jarvis Newman he owned at the time set up to switch back and forth between seining and lobstering. I just wasn’t sure when he slept.
But speed didn’t enter into Alfred’s world until 1996 or so, when David mentioned the Young Brothers powering one of their 38-footers with a new-to-the-market Mack diesel, carrying a stock rating of 900 horsepower.
“I went down and had a ride on that 38,” Alfred said, pausing to shake his head, as if he was reliving that first full-throttle 42-mph pass off Corea. “I’d ... I’d never seen anything like it, you know?”
And that was it: Alfred Osgood was hooked. By the following year, he had the Starlight Express race-ready. She was a Holland 38 with one of the big V-8 Macks, capable of busting 52 mph.
His main competition in the diesel ranks? Another veteran fisherman, Andrew Gove of Stonington, and his Uncle’s UFO, a Mack-powered Northern Bay 36 that was hard to beat.
For both Alfred and Andrew it was always a matter of pride that even though the engines might have been “smartened up” for runs in the 50-mph range on race day, come Monday morning they were down the bay hauling lobster gear.
Of course, you can have all the rules you want in lobsterboat racing, but when it comes down to what class you should be racing in horsepower-wise, there’s no such thing as tech inspections. Nobody is tearing down anyone’s engine or putting it on a dynamometer to verify the horsepower; you’re taking a fisherman’s word.
And then there are the boats like the gas-engined 30-foot Foolish Pleasure, which resembles a lobsterboat, but make no bones about it: she only exists to go fast in a straight line. In Foolish Pleasure’s case, that would officially be 72.8 mph, recorded on a radar gun in 2011. Her unofficial numbers are even higher.
But as far as working lobsterboats go? “You see this?” David Osgood asked me as we idled out of Carvers Harbor aboard his 33-foot Split S.E.C.O.N.D. He pointed to the well-worn area of the washboard where you brace your knees off to break a trap aboard.
“Some of those ‘working’ boats don’t have a lot of wear there,” he said, referring to some of the supposed trap-hauling lobsterboats that enter the races.
“There’s a line and it gets crossed a lot—we all know it,” said Alfred. “But the fact is, most of the people that come to the races don’t care. They want to see fast boats...and don’t care if you haul traps with it or not.”
David Osgood might’ve been the one in the family first bitten by the racing bug, but he didn’t have a competitive boat himself until 2001, when he launched the Split S.E.C.O.N.D., a Crowley-Beal 33 powered by a TAMD 74 Volvo Penta 450-hp engine. That boat would hit 35.5 mph “right in the bucket.” A 2021 repower with a 550-hp D8 Volvo Penta bumped that number up to over 38 mph, with a 30-mph cruising speed at 2,100 rpm.
In the meantime, Alfred, in a classic if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em move, replaced his first Starlight Express with a Northen Bay 36 (the same model as Uncle’s UFO), capable of pulling speeds in the mid-to-high 50s, no problem.
And then came David’s son, Steven, who’d basically grown up aboard fast lobsterboats. After tending his own lobster gear out of a 19-foot Seaway and a 22-foot Sisu, Steven moved up to Venom, a fast 28-foot Mussel Ridge. And that was eventually replaced by Shootin’ S.T.A.R., a Northern Bay 36 formally known as Motivation, that was clocked in the 50s when powered by a C18 Caterpillar. Since repowering the 36-footer with a 750-hp John Deere, “The best I’ve seen for speed at the races is 41.8,” said Steven. “But she’ll do a good 39 mph, ready to haul.”
Alfred wasn’t done yet, however. His current Starlight Express is a Wayne Beal 36 modified with a pair of molded chines to run on. Powered by a 1,200-hp MAN, that boat posted a 56.8 mph run at Winter Harbor’s event in 2023, during which the whole control head (both throttle and shift handles) was uprooted from the dash.
When asked if any of their racing escapades on a weekend has ever cost them a day of working with those same lobsterboats come Monday morning, all three shook their heads no. The closest was probably Steven’s race aboard Venom when he had to stand on the cap of the engine’s expansion tank going down the racecourse to keep it from blowing off.
The Osgood legacy continues with Steven’s 3-year-old son, Deacon, who already has a fascination with all things lobstering—as well as boats that go fast and make a lot of noise when they do.
“Why not?” said his great-grandfather, making a wide-eyed face at Deacon. “It’s fun to go fast, right?”
Deacon giggled and nodded.
✮
Brian Robbins’ past lives include years as an offshore lobsterman and editor for Commercial Fisheries News.
2026 Lobster Boat
Race Schedule
JUNE
20th—Boothbay Harbor
21st—Rockland
28th—Bass Harbor
JULY
4th—Jonesport-Beals
12th—Stonington
19th—Friendship
26th—Harpswell
AUGUST
8th—Winter Harbor
9th—Pemaquid
15th—Long Island
16th—Portland
All Races:
Sign up—8 to 9 a.m.
Race start—10 a.m.
(Exception: Long Island; Sign up: 10 to 11 a.m.; Race start: noon)
* All races have announcers who broadcast over VHF radio. Listen to all races on VHF channel 10.
* Check “Fans of Maine Lobster Boat Racing” Facebook page for updates.
