It was just after midnight when the support boat’s rack of lights cut out, leaving Gary Kristensen in near-darkness as he paddled down the Columbia River in a roughly thousand-pound hollowed-out pumpkin.
“We had jerry-rigged lights on the pontoon boat, some Harbor Freight lights that we had bought, and we had wires running across the seats and the wires caught on fire,” He said. “We didn’t have those lights after that point.”
Kristensen continued paddling through the night and into the next before calling off his effort. Climbing from the giant orange watercraft north of Vancouver after paddling 45.67 miles, Kristensen became the new Guinness World Records holder for “longest journey by pumpkin boat (paddling).”
The recent trip was the culmination of more than a decade of pumpkin breeding that sprouted into giant pumpkin regatta racing before evolving into a world record.