A Missouri man broke this year’s Guinness World Record for the longest pumpkin boat ride.
After nearly 11 hours on the Missouri River in his 1,208-pound pumpkin boat named Huckleberry, Steve Quinney of Lebanon emerged from his 38-mile trip up the river “cold and tired but happy with the result.”
He started his long, cold walk at 7:30 in the morning Kansas City, Kansas and reached Napoleon, Missouri At 6:18 p.m., Quinney told USA Today.
The Paddle KC Padding Club joined Queenie as well as six boats to make sure “we’re doing something very silly and very safe,” he said. The crew helped him monitor his speed to make sure he wasn’t paddling in the dark.
Being inside a carved pumpkin is exactly what you imagine, just a little cold and gooey. Based on preliminary calculations, Queenie has logged just over 39 miles while kneeling inside Huckleberry.
Planning and taking concrete steps to make this trip began around February of this year, but Queenie has always had a passion for getting out on the water and growing giant pumpkins.
Queenie worked on the river as a teenager and started growing pumpkins in 2020, when everyone else was starting to take up hobbies like gardening or making sourdough bread. He thought the distance was possible so why not try.
The gravity of the situation did not fully affect him until he reached the starting point.
“We really do this,” Quinney said.
Quinney plans to submit all the evidence collected to confirm his journey such as witnesses, GPS data, time stamps, video footage, photographs and other documents to Guinness World Records for verification.
“We’re going to take this pumpkin and try to sail 38 miles to set a new world record. The current record of over 37 miles was set about a year ago. “We’re going to start at sunrise and try to get out there and get some miles in,” Queenie shared. KCTV5 in a television interview Early Monday morning.
Last year, Nebraska man Duane Hansen set a Guinness World Record for canoeing a pumpkin at his home 846 pounds of pumpkinbreaking all previous records.
Isemi: A man paddles an 846-pound pumpkin down the Missouri River to set a world record. They call him “Cinderella.”
What’s it like to ride a pumpkin down the Missouri River?
“It’s a little tight,” Quinney said. Radio station KCUR-FM 89.3.
To give himself more stability, Quinney added some sandbags to the floor of the fruit, according to the American “space” website. KCTV5.
Growing Huckle Berry large enough to serve as a boat took Kueny all summer. Dill’s Atlantic Giant is the only pumpkin species that can grow this large.
Queenie grew the pumpkin himself, picked it about two weeks ago, weighed it, and chopped it up over the weekend. It took about 45 minutes to extract all the seeds.
“We tested its float before carving it so we knew which end we wanted to raise. Once we figured that out, we marked it, and cut a hole in the center,” Quinney shared with KCUR-FM.
He didn’t get a chance to test the Huckle Berry before taking it out into the water, but Kueny was hoping for the best.
“It could take all day, or it could be over in five minutes,” Quinney said.
The Paddle KC Padling Club crew had safety measures in place to protect Queenie such as checking the water temperature, speed, and when other vessels were coming in, marking multiple access points, said Christy Kurtz, founder and director of the Paddle KC Padling Club. Paddle Club KC He said.
“We hope to be able to get up to 4 1/2 mph. If we float at 3 mph and encounter some eddies, it could take up to 12 hours. But we don’t want to be out on the river,” Kurtz said. After dark tonight.”
Friends of the Cao Board member Teresa DeSalvo, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the Kansas River, served as an official witness to this record-breaking achievement. There will be another witness in Napoleon to document Queenie’s arrival.
“I was very excited about the Great Pumpkin coming to Cow Point. It’s all in the spirit of Halloween and bringing people together on the river on this beautiful day,” DiSalvo said. KCUR-FM.
Who are the previous pumpkin rowing record holders?
There were some people who dared to paddle across a body of water in a makeshift gourd ship in the past couple of years.
Below is a list of previous record holders:
- Duane Hansen (2022) – Took a 37.50 mile trip down the Missouri River
- Rick Swenson (2016) – Made a 25-mile trip from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Oslo, Minnesota
Using pumpkins as a vessel is nothing new. A Tennessee man grew a 910-pound pumpkin in 2019 that floated on water.
A small town in Illinois used to host 500-pound pumpkin boat races at its annual festival.
As for Kony, he claims he’s “just a guy with a giant pumpkin and a weird sense of adventure.”
“Seems like a good enough way to spend a Monday morning.”
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“Beer aficionado. Gamer. Alcohol fanatic. Evil food trailblazer. Avid bacon maven.”