World’s longest journey by pumpkin boat | Hacker News Reader

World’s longest journey by pumpkin boat

smithsonianmag.com

108 pointsBrajeshwar43 comments

I grew my first giant pumpkin this year. Unfortunately, it's a bit too small for me to sit in—it's only about 500 lbs [1]. I will know for sure next Saturday when I move it to a contest.

I think I'll be able to grow a larger one next year, since I did quite a few things wrong this time. If anyone in Los Angeles (South Bay area) wants into this silly project—whether for growing, escorting with a boat, or even paddling—please get in touch :-)

[1] https://giantpumpkins.co.nz/giant-pumpkin-weight-estimation-...

This is when I really wish HN allowed us to upload pictures here directly.

Eh. One level of indirection prevents abuse, eliminates swathes of new hosting problems, but is also more … ephemeral?

I think the community is better because of it.

How large do they have to be to make a boat out of them? ~ > 700lbs?

I worked for a local farmer in high school. One of the novelties he grew in small quantities were “square” watermelons[0]. When grown in a square fibreglass enclosure, the melons would conform to the cube shape.

I wonder if a pumpkin could be grown in a kayak-shaped mold to improve the maneuverability of the pumpkin boat.

[0]: https://www.whataboutwatermelon.com/index.php/2018/05/cube-w...

Yes, this should be done. It needs to be done. I neither have a pumpkin farm, or a kayak mold making company, but I support those that do in this endeavor. God speed brave pumpkin kayaker.

You don't need a pumpkin farm, just an ordinarily sized garden and $6 worth of seeds:

https://parkseed.com/dills-atlantic-giant-pumpkin-seeds/p/05...

A plastic kayak would probably not survive the mold-making process, but that's fine, you can get a kayak either used (abused) from a local livery for dirt cheap depending on your bartering/scrounging skills, or a low-quality new one can be had for under $200 at a big box store, and simply be cut off the pumpkin.

I wonder if it would disqualify you to coat the pumpkin in a thick layer of Line-X:

I live right next to dills farm! There's recently been a controversy where protester have been trying to change how the water in a local lake is managed, and the lake have been completely shut down (as in it is now a dust bowl unless it's rained recently), so we can no longer have our yearly giant pumpkin boat races.

What's the feeling in the community when pumpkin boat season comes along? Sounds like a bunch of fun

Remember the square bonzai kitten thing. https://www.wired.com/2001/02/fbi-goes-after-bonsaikitten-co...

Oh god, I remember this. My mom sent it to her sister who was outraged — frothing at the mouth, practically — that someone could do something so cruel. It was hard to convince her that it was a fake, and then of course she said that such things should be banned.

I also know that she enjoys veal, so as usual, human hypocrisy WRT animal exploitation knows no bounds.

> I also know that she enjoys veal, so as usual, human hypocrisy WRT animal exploitation knows no bounds.

That seems like quite the false equivalence.

I dunno — torturing a sentient being to to death for your own amusement is fucked up no matter how you slice it. A calf is about as smart as a cat, has an emotional life, and cares about its family. Eating meat is not necessary for survival; we do it for convenience or entertainment.

The primary difference between a cat and calf in Western culture is that we view one as a pet, and the other as protein on legs. If you subjected a dog to what a veal calf goes through you’d be hauled into a police station.

I don’t know why I decided to inject myself into a vegan argument

maybe closer to fois gras?

"Foie gras production should be judged not by the worst farms, but by the best"

https://www.seriouseats.com/the-physiology-of-foie-why-foie-...

That article does a great job of further explaining why the practice is cruel, by also showing how the ducks are left in an albeit not as typically cramped, but nonetheless dank, large shed.

The quote seems to make people think it could be ethical, because the prior treatment is slightly better than average?

One of my favorite (!?) FBI anecdotes is that one of the cartoonists who was syndicated in the original print version of The Onion, managed to have one of his characters make a joke about bombing the WTC get published the same week a bomb went off in the parking garage. Dumbest luck. He got to have a nice chat with some men in black about that one.

I totally understand why they would need to dot some i's and cross some t's on that one but the bonsai kitten thing is just inane.

A different approach: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fungus-answer-climate-c...

This is a great idea, I had a similar thought thinking about how woody gourds are and wondering if you grew a giant one, if you could somehow shape it more like a boat, dry it out and seal it and be on the water.

You know there are are other materials that one can shape to be boat-like? In fact, it's the way we've been making boats for a long time....

Why do they have model rocket launch height competitions? We already have real rockets that go to space.

Almost all competitions have different restrictions/categories to participate in (swimming has backstroke, butterfly, freestyle, etc, etc)

Different categories of a competition challenge different things. There are very different engineering challenges related to building a boat out of a pumpkin. It doesn't make a better boat than standard metal/wooden boats, but it does cause people to think about boat building in a different way. It might just be a fun personal challenge, or it might be a fun way to think up classic boat solutions by looking at things from a completely new lens.

Worst case this wastes someone time and money (which a lot of standard engineering does too), best case someone has fun and/or learns something.

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Kayaks are long and skinny. The shells of giant pumpkins are think. I think you'd have trouble getting enough flotation. You need something with a better surface area to volume ration, a boat more like a hemisphere. I'm thinking a coracle mold. But then, that's basically what a giant pumpkin is already.

I think this is the guy you want to help you make your racing pumpkin:

You might also be interested in cardboard boat regattas.

That will certainly be how this arms race progresses.

Records are meant to be broken.

Oh my god, he cut a cup holder into it.

> by setting sail in an 846-pound pumpkin

Is it correct to say "setting sail" when there's no sail being set? I did't think so, but it should be safe to say the editors at Smithsonian are pretty good.

Yes it's correct. Setting sail is an idiom.

See also: sailors and sailings. Not idioms, but nouns that don’t imply a particular form of propulsion.

"After numerous pints of Guinness he left the pub and set sail for home even though he was certainly three sheets to the wind" sounds reasonable to my ear.

Wish I knew about this - I would have gone to see the trip. Well, at least my state is on the map for something. If it were possible to grow giant corn, we would definitely be in the news for that.

Looks like Costa Rica has the record there:

https://www.neogen.com/neocenter/blog/worlds-tallest-corn-pl...

Edit: Oops, I lied, better link says it's New York: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/tallest-s...

Did you notice that it's the same person?

The first link says he moved from New York to Costa Rica in 2017, in the pursuit of taller corn.

But the second one says he beat his own record, in 2021, back in New York.

I want a podcast of this.

Wow, no I didn't! I bet that is quite the story. Surprising that New York would be an improvement. It seems like the relatively short growing season would be limiting.

> traveling 38 miles down the Missouri River.

Well that's practically cheating.

38 miles in 12 hours in a river that has an average velocity of 3 to 3.5 mph.

Kudos to him for keeping the pumpkin upright in a difficult river, but I don't think he would have done quite so well in a lake.

On the other hand, a river with Class 3 rapids might have surface flow velocity of 10 or 20 mph, but that's not a good place to be in a pumpkin. Probably best to try this on the Missouri rather than the Congo....

Any of the rivers around here would rip that thing to shreds too.

The envelope math on that tells me almost all of his paddling went to controlling the pumpkin, not moving it forward, which makes sense for a round 'boat' and a single paddle. Some cultures have solutions for this but he wasn't aware of them.

Even a little shaping to make the pumpkin more oblong would net you quite a bit of velocity. In particular, the ribs on a pumpkin look a lot like hard chines on a kayak, if you cut open the side of the pumpkin [correction: he already did this, but on a round pumpkin, and then he sat 90° to the ribs] instead of the top. The next fool who tries this I expect to hit 40 miles in 10 hours, and then it's off to the races.

I was amazed at how much pumpkin could grow and how it could be used for sailing.

This story feels like it could be the plot of a children's book.

Almost: The Runaway Pumpkin by Kevin Lewis and S. D. Schindler https://www.amazon.com/dp/0439565448

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