ROCKLAND (AP) – It was smaller-scale and less intense, but there were hints of the same excitement that grips crowds at lobster boat races along the coast from Beals to Boothbay Harbor.

Hundreds of spectators lined up along the harbor last weekend to watch scale model boats compete head-to-head in the first miniature lobster boat races at the Maine Lobster Festival.

Radio remote controls enable operators to steer and accelerate, but the boats would sometimes get hung up in seaweed or fail to stay on course.

The model vessels, featuring the stout and curvy proportions of their real-life counterparts, are built on a 1-inch to 1-foot scale and run on 12-volt battery-powered motors. Many are crafted from kits sold by Bluejacket Shipcrafters of Searsport.

The boats were launched from a float and were supposed to motor to a line formed by green buoys, then race 300 feet along the bulkhead at Harbor Park to a pair of red buoys.

The first heat pitted Rockland harbormaster Ed Glaser’s R2 D2 against Jericho, operated by Jerry Fernald of Waldoboro. But when the horn sounded the start, Glaser’s boat was nowhere to be seen.

The announcer, at various times during the day, reported to the crowd that R2 D2 was sighted west of Waldoboro, off the Florida coast and finally, rounding Cape Horn.

But on the last race of the day, R2 D2 redeemed itself by roaring out from under a dock and passing Gordon Smith’s Lavon L., which ran into problems linked to a broken switch connecting the battery and motor.

The Smiths took their defeat in stride. “We came here to get beat,” said Brian Smith, Gordon’s father, who modeled the Lavon L. on a lobster boat from which he used to fish.

The overall winner was the Kathryn A., owned and operated by Jerome Morris of Union, which wowed the crowd as it tore across the water, clocking in at 29.5 seconds.

The scratch-built boat was modeled after a 1950-era Newbert & Wallis craft, Morris said.