ROCKLAND, Maine — Maine Lobster Festival volunteers were back at Harbor Park on Monday, dismantling booths, taking down tents and cleaning the grounds as the 66th annual summer highlight for the city is in the history books.
“It was another successful year,” said festival president Tim Carroll as he worked a forklift to move some lobster traps.
The grounds need to be cleared, as Rockland’s waterfront park will host the annual Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors Show this coming weekend.
Attendance was down slightly for the Lobster Festival from last year but sales were up, Carroll said. He said that the timing of rain likely kept down the attendance. There was rain Friday, showers came through during the Saturday parade and the threat of thunderstorms arrived near the end of the day Sunday.
Specific attendance numbers were not yet available but the festival generally attracts 40,000-50,000 people, not counting free admission day on Sunday.
Brian Plourde said sales of lobsters were up slightly from 2012. Visitors bought and consumed 18,000 pounds of Maine’s top seafood and another 1,200 pounds of picked lobster meat was purchased and eaten.
The weather was perfect for the record 290 people who ran and finished the annual 10-kilometer road race. The race has been part of the festival since 1981, running 6.2 miles from near the festival grounds to neighboring Glen Cove and back to the festival site.
The winner this year was Timothy Cote from Brooklyn, N.Y., who finished the course in 37 minutes and 31 seconds. Erik Phelan, 27, of Nobleboro, finished 14 seconds behind Cote. The first woman to cross the finish line was last-year’s female winner, Jennifer Rapaport, 49, of Melrose, Mass., who was 12th with a time of 41:39. The first Rockland resident to cross the finish line was 16-year-old Nicholas Mahar, who came in 24th with a time of 44:08.
The course record was set in 1995 by Robert Winn of York, who ran the route in 31 minutes, 28 seconds.
The children’s race also saw a record field of 83, nearly double from a year ago. Race director Holly Sherburne said that moving the race’s start time a half hour later — to 8 a.m. — likely was the reason for the jump in participation. Michael Duzyk, 12, of Lexington, Ky., was the winner of the children’s one-mile run.
And in the popular lobster crate race, Duncan Widdecombe, 11, of South Thomaston bested the field by being able to run back and forth across a string of 50 lobster crates in the harbor 40 times for a total of 2,000 crates. Widdecombe, who was the runner-up in the crate race in 2012, could have continued to expand on that total but the competition was shut down early because of the threat of thunderstorms, Celia Crie Knight said.
The runner-up in the crate race was last year’s winner and record holder, 12-year-old Connor McGonagle of Owls Head, who crossed 6,000 crates last year. He completed 1,645 crates this year.
On Wednesday night, Melissa Philbrook was crowned the 2013 Sea Goddess.