A Missouri resident swam 60 km on a pumpkin boat: this is a world record

A Missouri man has broken the Guinness World Record for the longest journey on a pumpkin boat, reports USAToday.

Photo: IStock

Steve Kueni of Lebanon, Missouri, felt "cold, tired, but happy with the results" after his 60-mile journey across the river.

Sailing the 547kg pumpkin boat called Huckle Berry down the Missouri River took 11 hours. Steve departed at 7:30 a.m. for Kansas City, Kansas, and arrived in Napoleon, Missouri at 18:18 p.m.

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Kueni was joined by the Paddle KC Padding Club along with a half-dozen boats to make sure “we were doing something really stupid but safe,” he said. The crew helped him pace himself so he could make it in time for dark.

Being inside a carved pumpkin is a bit cold and slimy. According to preliminary calculations, Kueni traveled just over 60 km while kneeling inside the pumpkin.

Missouri man and a 1,200-pound gourd attempt world record for longest journey by pumpkin boat from Julie Denesha on Vimeo.

He started planning and taking concrete steps to make this trip happen around February of this year, but Kueni has always loved being on the water and growing giant pumpkins.

Cueni trained on the river as a teenager and took up pumpkin farming in 2020, when everyone started taking up hobbies like gardening and making sourdough bread. He decided that the swim was quite possible, so why not try it.

Cueni plans to submit all evidence collected to support his journey, such as witnesses, GPS data, time stamps, videos, photographs and other documentation, to Guinness World Records for verification.

“We're going to take this pumpkin and try to swim 60km to set a new world record. The current record was set at a distance of 59 km about a year ago. We are going to start at dawn,” Kueni said in the early morning of October 9.

Last year, Nebraska resident Dwayne Hansen set a Guinness World Record for rowing his 383kg pumpkin, breaking all previous records.

What's a Pumpkin's Journey Like on the Missouri River?

Just a little cramped, Cueni said.

To give himself a little more stability, Kueni added a few sandbags to the floor of the pumpkin.

It took Kueni all summer to grow this particular pumpkin, large enough to be used as a boat. Dill's Atlantic Giant is the only pumpkin variety that can grow to this size.

Kueni grew the pumpkin himself, took it to be weighed about two weeks ago, and then cut it into pieces over the weekend. It took him about 45 minutes to remove all the seeds. He didn't have a chance to try out the pumpkin before heading out on the water, but Cueni hoped for the best.

“It could take all day, or it could be over in five minutes,” Cueni shared.

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The Paddle KC Rowing Club crew took safety precautions to protect Kueni, checking water temperature and speed, checking the approach of other boats and marking several access points to docks, said Christy Kurtz, founder and manager of the Paddle KC Rowing Club.

“We hope to be able to reach 7 km per hour. If we swim at 4,8 km per hour and get caught in eddies, it could take up to 12 hours. But we don’t want to go behind schedule and sail after dark tonight,” Kurtz said.

Teresa DeSalvo, a board member of Friends of the Kaw, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the Kansas River, became the official witness to the record.

“I was really excited about the huge pumpkin coming to Cow Point. It’s all in the spirit of Halloween and bringing people together on the river on this beautiful day,” DeSalvo said.

Who were the previous pumpkin rowing record holders?

Over the past couple of years, there have been several people who have dared to cross the river in a homemade pumpkin boat.

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Here is a list of previous record holders:

• Duane Hansen (2022) - completed a 59 km trip along the Missouri River.
• Rick Swanson (2016) - Made a 40-mile trip from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Oslo, Minnesota.

As for Cueni, he claims he's "just a guy with a giant pumpkin and a quirky sense of adventure."

“It seemed like a pretty good way to spend a Monday morning,” he said.

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