Those lighter boats aren’t safe, Gove and others said, and, to their sorrow, they were right. What they had long dreaded came true in Searsport on Aug. 26, when, in a choppy sea, James West’s recreational racing boat WILD WILD WEST became airborne at what Beals boat-builder Calvin Beal reportedly clocked at 46.5 mph. It then flipped over, landed bottom up, and sank stern first. One crewmember was thrown clear of the vessel, the other had to be pulled out. Add to that the comment of a racing spectator who reported, “At that speed, it looked to me like the only thing that saved LUNASEA (against which the WILD WILD WEST was then competing) was that it was in the lee of the WILD WILD WEST, which was breaking the sea from it.” Only luck saved spectators who might have been in the unmanned boat’s path had it righted itself and continued to skim across the water. Gove said, “I shiver when I think how bad it could have been.”
Weight was an important factor in the accident. Gove’s working lobsterboat is between 16,000 and 18,000 pounds. His engine weighs 4,000 pounds. West’s boat is supposedly 5,000 pounds, and his engine is lighter, too. Lighter boats may be quicker, Gove said, but they’re not as steady.
According to Clive Farrin, of Boothbay Harbor, chairman of the races’ oversight committee, the WILD WILD WEST flipped over and sank because all the weight was in the stern. The engine’s placement was similar to that of an inboard-outboard motor. The big block engine was set up on top of the deck, above the waterline for the most part, far astern. The weight in the rest of the boat consisted of the hull and cabin and the two men standing at the bulkhead. LUNASEA was also built for racing, but its engine is placed about where a working lobsterboat’s would be: amidships, giving it better balance. (Brian Robbins, who invented the point system used at the races when he covered them for Commercial Fisheries News in the early 1990s, observed that boats built solely for racing, such as LUNASEA and WILD WILD WEST, though disguised as lobster boats, can be differentiated from their working counterparts because they lack the scars on the side working boats carry from hauling traps.)
Although no one was killed or permanently injured in the accident, the Coast Guard stopped the races because of the weather conditions and the accident brought long-standing grievances to a head and led the races’ two sponsors, Commercial Fisheries News and Shepherd’s Lobster Wire, to rescind their sponsorship.
While many people thought increased liability the most likely cause, it was only one of a number if issues that have plagued the races in recent years. Advocates of racing working lobster boats cited such factors as the inequity of pitting the heavier, slower working boats against lighter, faster boats designed exclusively for racing; the danger in racing boats with souped-up, pushed-to-the-max engines; and the moral issue of making utterly false declarations of horsepower.
The fun and competition Jonesport and Beals lobstermen started many years ago in the days of fishing from peapods, that of coming in from haul then racing each other directly after landing their catches, grew sharper as Winter Harbor lobstermen picked up the sport, followed by Stonington lobstermen, and so on. The races became community affairs. Nowhere, however, have they been more competitive than at Jonesport and Beals, where racers were known to give their their boats an edge by such methods as knocking out windshields to reduce drag. Until recent technological advances in boat design and engines, though, everyone raced the same species: working lobsterboats. Before the days of computerized engines fishermen were limited in the amount of monkeying they could do boats an edge by such methods as knocking out windshields to reduce drag. Until recent technological advances in boat design and engines, though, everyone raced the same species: working lobsterboats. Before the days of computerized engines fishermen were limited in the amount of monkeying they could do to vessel or engine.
“They showed me all their little secrets,” Robbins recalled, adding that everyone involved in the races has been good to him. “I couldn’t write about a lot of it,” he said, “but it helped the stories be fuller. The big contenders were all doing something. It may have been as simple as, if it were a working lobsterboat, getting the bait box out and running the fuel tank down so it wouldn’t [add to the weight], cleaning the bottom, changing propellers. At the time, what people were doing to diesel engines you might put under the heading of, a turn of the screw or changing injectors.” Nobody knew how much these relatively minimal changes affected horsepower, but Robbins thinks it was in the 10 to 60 horsepower range.
The newer engines are computerized. “Now,” he said, “you can take the same basic [engine] block and, to the human eye standing on the dock, the most able of mechanics will tell you, ‘I can’t tell by looking at that engine [what’s been done].’ You can make internal modifications with diesels where you’re talking about hundreds of horsepower. The only way you can prove [it’s been modified] is by tearing the thing down.”
The problem takes on new dimensions when the racer declares his motor to have the manufacturer’s standard designated horsepower instead of its modified one, which may be double the horsepower, thus giving him a huge advantage over other vessels in his class.
“The difference between cheating [the old bending of the rules] and bald-faced lying,” Clive Farrin said, “is the difference between a married man flirting and having an extra-marital affair.”
The trouble is, he said, the lobsterboat race committees don’t have the money to test engines as they do at NASCAR races; nevertheless, today’s lobsterboat races, with, in many cases, boats built lighter for racing and motors tuned up to the max, could easily be called NASCAR-on-the-water.
Changes are going to have to be made in the name of safety. Gove wants the classes separated so that working boats don’t have to compete against non-working boats. He thinks people who enter boats as working lobsterboats should be carrying the same engine they haul with. He also thinks fewer boats on the starting line would make for more space between boats and that boats should have to stay behind the flag boat until the flag is dropped.
Dale Torrey, of Winter Harbor, who has been racing for about 30 years, spoke for many others including Gove when he declared, “If you don’t go lobstering, I don’t think you have a right to be in a lobster boat race. You should be in the boatbuilders class or the modified class or whatever, not with the working lobster boats.” He also feels strongly about what he calls “these little, light boats with so much horsepower in them,” and said he saw his fears realized at Searsport. “It’s a wonder someone hasn’t gotten killed; it’s a dangerous, dangerous business. If one of them hits you, it’ll come right through you.”
Farrin said, “I think we need to do some things that provide some liability coverage for everybody. One way to provide that coverage is to form a non-profit entity: Maine Lobsterboat Racing Association. Every sport like it has an association and a calendar of events just like we do, it’s just that we haven’t gone the next organizational step. If we did form an association and had dues-paying members and things like that, then I think it would be more attractive to commercial sponsors because they wouldn’t be putting themselves at such a high rate of exposure on liability issues.”
All these questions and more will be put before the public for further discussion and suggestions in a meeting at Searsport on Jan. 5. The oversight committee will bring the conclusions of that meeting to the Fishermen’s Forum in March for a final vote. At the January meeting, “Hard questions are going to have to be asked,” Farrin said, “and hard decisions are going to have to be made.”