In more than 30 years of competitive clam shucking, Beattie Quintal has only lost once.
She won the competition at the Boothbay Harbor Fishermen’s Festival every year from 1978 to 1999, until they stopped holding the contest. As of July 17, she’s won the last 10-straight Maine State Clam Shucking Contests at the Yarmouth Clam Festival.
“It was hard in Boothbay Harbor, because no one would come to compete against me,” Quintal said, sitting next to a half dozen of her trophies and awards at the kitchen table of her Waldoboro home after this year’s Clam Festival victory. “I’d love to see some more competition. It would make it more exciting.”
Several clam-processing plants from around the state have brought out their best shuckers to take on the 54-year-old Quintal, who hasn’t shucked clams professionally since she was in her mid-twenties.
Quintal has shucked all of them under the table, and said the only person that could give her a real run would be the one person she’s lost to – her older sister. Her sister beat her in a clam-shucking contest at Waldoboro Day years ago, and the two haven’t squared off since.
“I’m here to tell you, she wouldn’t beat me today,” Quintal said.
This year, Quintal shucked 45 clams in two minutes.
The Second place finisher shucked 33 clams. “That’s a lot of clams,” Quintal said of her closest competitor in years. “It doesn’t make me nervous, but it makes me want to do better.”
Though Quintal didn’t say it, the answer to how she could get better seems obvious: practice.
“It’s not what I wanted to do with my whole life,” Quintal said. “I’m a lobster person. I used to eat clams raw when I was a kid, but I don’t really enjoy them that much anymore.”
Because she doesn’t eat them, Quintal doesn’t shuck more than a clam or two all year, except in competition.
She learned to shuck clams from her father, who owned a seafood processing business, staffed by Quintal and her 14 siblings.
Quintal and her older sister used to sit, one on each side of a hod – a gallon container that holds “at least 500 clams” – and work through the whole thing in less than 20 minutes. “When you’re a kid, shucking them day in and day out for six or seven hours a day, you just want to get it done as fast as you can so you can go play,” she said.
Some years, Quintal has to push herself hard to get out and compete, but she does it because she started competing after her father died in 1975. “It’s sort of a memorial thing for him,” she said. “If he saw the trophies I’ve won, I think he’d be proud.”
She thinks her father would be proudest, however, of the bachelor’s degree in social work she earned from the University of Maine Augusta. She was employed as a social worker at Miles Memorial Hospital for a year and a half, quitting five years ago when she and her husband moved their business, Lou’s Powersports, from their home to their current location on Rt. 1 in Nobleboro.
She plans to go back to social work at some point because she loves helping people, she said. “Shucking clams isn’t my passion in life, it’s a skill I learned growing up.”
Quintal has two children and a pair of corgis and lives in Waldoboro with her husband. Her daughter and two grandchildren live with them.
Though she doesn’t have as much time to spend on her gardens as she’d like, Quintal said she loves to watch things grow. “I love putting my hands in the dirt,” she said. “I could never wear gloves.”
However, it’s her phenomenal track record as a clam-shucking champion that has garnered Quintal attention, and the consistency of competing – and winning – year after year is important to Quintal. “It’s important just to show up.”
“God willing, I’ll be back to compete again next year,” she said, and unless her sister takes a spot next to her at the shucking table, Quintal may very well win again.
