Open Water Racing

The Lifesaving Museum sponsors five major races annually. These are all “open” events, available to all qualified participants, with the exception of The Icebreaker, which is an all youth invitational. Prize categories differ race to race, but usually include adult and youth categories in the coxed boats, single, double, and HOV (three-plus) in the Livery and Workboat categories, and single and tandem in Kayaks. Common boats types in our races include: captain's gigs, coxed fours, dories, guide boats, kayaks, peapods, pilot gigs, skiffs, whale boats, whitehalls, and wherries.

Museum Sponsored Races

Crash-Bobs: Hull's Indoor Rowing Event
Initially conceived as a local warm-up for the World Championship CRASH-Bs in late February, the Crash-Bobs has taken on a life of its own, now attracting dozens of hard-corps pain seekers to Hull in the deepest depths of winter.

Nantasket Roads Regatta
The Nantasket Roads Regatta is a 5.5-mile, late spring race that circumnavigates Little Brewster Island and Boston Light and bisects the entire Brewster Archipelago, beginning and ending in front of the museum's Windmill Point Boathouse at Hull Gut.

The Snow Row
The museum's signature rowing race, the winter Snow Row, covers a 3 3/4 mile triangular course starting off the beach at Windmill Point, continuing around Sheep Island, past the Peddocks Island day marker, and back to shore.

The Head of the Weir
One of the museum's best-loved rowing events is the Head of the Weir River Race, a raucous celebration of open-water rowing, the Weir River Estuary, and Boston Harbor in autumn.

The Icebreaker: Northeast Regional Youth Open Water Rowing Championships
The sport of “fixed-seat/open-water rowing ,” once somewhat esoteric, is rapidly expanding into the mainstream - as evidenced at the fabulously exciting, all-youth invitational, The Icebreaker. The most highly-skilled youth open-water rowers in the Northeast converge on Boston Harbor late every fall to compete for the coveted “Key to the Harbor.”