A Missouri man has squashed the world record for the longest voyage by pumpkin boat — a gourdian feat that saw him paddle 38 miles in a 1,293-pound pumpkin.
Like the brave explorers who rowed from Kaw Point into the perilous unknown nearly 100 years before, Steve Keuny struck out from Lewis and Clark Park at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers at sunrise Monday, undaunted at the helm of a giant hollow pumpkin.
“It may take all day or it may be over in five minutes,” Keuny told KCUR as he and his orange vessel slipped into the water.
“I’m just a guy with a pumpkin and a whimsical sense of adventure out to have fun.”
Armed with a set of kayak paddles and some sandbags for added stability, Keuny rowed and drifted in the pitching pumpkin for 11 hours until he arrived safely at Napoleon, Missouri, beating out the previous record set by Duane Hansen last year by about half a mile and nearly 500 pounds.
Kueny spent all summer growing Huckle Berry in his garden, he told USA Today, just one of several giant pumpkins he’s reared there since picking up the hobby during the pandemic.
By the time it was big enough for the voyage, Huckle Berry measured 13 feet, 6 inches in circumference, and was about 8 inches thick all around.
It took 45 minutes to scoop out all the seeds, and Keuny didn’t even take it for a test ride before he made his record attempt.
“We test floated it before we carved it so we would know which end wanted to be up. Once we figured that out, we marked it, made the hole at the center,” he said.
When he finally did climb inside, it was cramped, cold, and more than a little slimy, Keuny reported.
He was joined by a legion of kayakers from the Paddle KC Club, who brought along spare paddles and helped ensure “we’re doing something very silly very safely.”
“We’ve checked the water temperature, the speed of the water. We have contingency plans, we know when the barges are coming and we have all the different ramp access points marked out,” said club manager Christy Kurtz.
“This is one of the more crazy things that we’ve attempted, but we’re out here paddling all the time,” she said.
Keuny’s next step is to submit the details of his journey to the Guinness World Records, so he can cement his position in the pantheon of the world’s great explorers.
Undying glory was hardly Keuny’s only motivation in undertaking his feat.
“It seemed like a good enough way to spend a Monday morning,” he said.