ROCKPORT — The Maine Lobster Boat Racing Association has scheduled nine events for the coming season, but with sky-high fuel prices some fishermen are wondering how strong participation will be.

Racing is scheduled to get under way on Saturday, June 21, at Boothbay Harbor. The season’s final race is set for Sunday, Aug. 10, off Pemaquid Point. Between those two dates, seven more events are scheduled.

The Midcoast fleet will assemble in Rockland harbor on Sunday, June 22. Run for the first time last year, the Rockland event drew a strong entry list for a brand new event.

The racers’ dance cards will be full during July. The first event of the month is scheduled for the morning of Friday, July 4, on Moosabec Reach between Jonesport and Beals Island. Experience reminds fans and competitors alike that, with the penchant for thick fog Downeast, that there are no guarantees that the races won’t be delayed for a couple of hours, if not a couple of days.

For years one of the most popular venues on the lobster boat racing circuit, Moosabec may see a thinner field this year. Boothbay lobsterman Clive Farrin, former president of the lobster boat racing association, said he thinks a lot of boats won’t make the long trip Downeast from the Midcoast.

“On my boat, it’s a hundred gallons up and back,” Farrin said. “With diesel prices what they are, that’s a $1,000 weekend. And that doesn’t include the lost fishing time.”

Farrin’s concerns work both ways. The season opener at Boothbay Harbor has always been popular with lobstermen from east of Penobscot Bay, but boats going to the races from Downeast face not only the high cost of fuel, but the probable cost of spending a night tied up at an expensive marina in the Midcoast harbor.

A week after the Moosabec races, the heads for Searsport at the head of Penobscot Bay, on Saturday, July 12. A day later, the fleet will be in Stonington.

Racing returns to the Midcoast at the end of July, with events scheduled for Friendship on Saturday, July 26, and for nearby Harpswell the next day. The annual points championship chase ends Saturday, Aug. 9, in Winter Harbor. The non-points races in Pemaquid end the season the following day.

This year’s annual meeting of the Lobster Boat Racing Association at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum didn’t produce much in the way of either controversy or changes. There had been some hope that an event in Portland would be added to the racing calendar, but that fell through. In an effort to limit entries in the three smallest gasoline-powered racing classes to true working lobster boats, racers agreed to limit carburetor size and to require “wet” exhaust manifolds.

No restriction was imposed in gas classes D and E, for boats with naturally aspirated or supercharged or turbocharged V8 engines, respectively, displacing more than 502 cubic inches. Last season, Beals Island resident Galen Alley won Class D virtually unchallenged in his wooden Lorna R powered by a Richard Weaver-prepared Chevrolet engine. There were no entrants in Class E.