Giant pumpkin paddling is apparently a new, hot water sport, with competitions around the globe. Who knew? From Nova Scotia, to Maine, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, Germany and the United Kingdom, people are carving out giant pumpkins, hopping aboard with a paddle and competing in regattas and solo events.
The races are paddled in giant pumpkins which originally weighed between 400 and 1,200 pounds. They are carved out to allow room for the paddler and to make the craft as light as possible for paddling.
The sport is relatively new. Credit as the first pumpkin paddler apparently goes to Wayne Hackney of Winchester, New Hampshire who paddled in a pumpkin he grew in 1996. In 1999, the first giant pumpkin regatta was raced on Lake Pesaquid in Windsor, Nova Scotia.
The race featured brightly painted carved giant pumpkins as make ship boats. The Windsor Pumpkin Regatta was such a success that it inspired simplar competions including one at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which began in 2005, and on Lake Champlain, in Colchester Vermont. In 2007, a race began in the Damariscotta, maine which continues to hold its Pumpkinfest & Regatta. In 2008, the first pumpkin race was held at the Cedarburg Wine & Harvest Festival in Wisconsin. Now there are also yearly races on the Taunton River in MA, and at the West Coast Giant Pumpkin Regatta in Tualatin, Oregon.
Pumpkin racing has also crossed the Atlantic. The sport has been picked up by the Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival in Southern, Germany. The festival itself has been ongoing since the 1880s, and added giant pumpkin paddling about ten years ago.
While most of giant pumpkin paddling have been group events, there is stiff competition among individual paddlers to set world pumkin paddling records.
Dmitri Galitzine in the UK set the Guinness World Record for the fastest paddling of 100 meters in a pumpkin. He later became the the first person to cross the Solent in a motorized pumpkin.
The competition for the longest distance paddled in a pumpkin really heated up this year. In July, Todd Sandstrum from Easton, MA set a Guinness World Record for distance in a 1,200-pound pumpkin in the Tauton River. Then in October, Rick Swenson smashed the record by paddling a giant pumpkin 26 miles down the Red River from Grand Forks to Oslo, Minn.
Racing giant pumpkins in Maine
Giant pumpkin boat: Man breaks two world records in pumpkin boat
I wonder if I could grow a giant pumpkin in my garden at Sebago? Maybe if I dedicated the entire bed to the effort.
My guess is that paddling is more fun than pumpkin growing.
http://modernfarmer.com/2015/10/how-to-grow-a-giant-pumpkin/
It’s not new!
People have been doing it for several years, mostly a local thing that doesn’t get much news coverage, like the homemade cardboard boats that try to paddle a course on a river.