Nebraska Man Makes World’s Longest Journey by Pumpkin Boat

Late final month, Nebraska resident Duane Hansen celebrated his sixtieth birthday by setting sail in an 846-pound pumpkin and touring 38 miles down the Missouri River.

The aim of the journey, which started the morning of August 27 on the Bellevue Marina and culminated 12 hours later in Nebraska Metropolis on the Riverview Marina, was to earn the Guinness World Data title for the longest journey by pumpkin boat, per the Omaha World-Herald’s Marjie Ducey. Earlier than Hansen, the report holder was Rick Swenson, who sailed the Crimson River between Minnesota and North Dakota by pumpkin boat in 2016, in accordance with Guinness World Data.

Hansen spent years on the challenge, ultimately naming his prize pumpkin Berta, he informed Information Channel Nebraska’s Dan Swanson. He was impressed to interrupt the report after attending a three-day pumpkin rising seminar in Portland, Oregon, 5 years in the past, when he met a girl who on the time held the report he sought.

“I requested her loads of questions and that’s after I determined I wished to do that,” he tells Information Channel Nebraska.

With a circumference of round 146 inches, Hansen decided that the pumpkin was giant sufficient for him to suit inside after he carved it out. Dubbed the S.S. Berta, the pumpkin was transported to the launching level atop a trailer, in accordance with the Washington Put up’s María Luisa Paúl.

Hansen hopped inside and took off for the day-long journey, with relations and associates cheering him on from alongside the banks. All through the subsequent 12 hours, he fought to remain afloat as an array of obstacles—together with rocks, sand bars and waves—threatened to tip him over. “You’ve acquired to be on prime of it the entire time,” he tells Information Channel Nebraska.

To adjust to the Guinness World Data’ guidelines, Hansen had requested non-family members to witness the occasion. Attendees included Bellevue Metropolis officers, who took photographs and movies alongside the best way to offer proof.

The inspiration for the Guinness E book of Data, because it was initially known as, happened after Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of Guinness Brewery, went on a searching journey to Eire in 1951. After failing to shoot a golden plover, he debated along with his searching celebration over what the quickest sport chook was, solely to comprehend that they couldn’t discover the reply in any reference e-book.

Unnerved by the group’s failure to reach at a consensus throughout their pub argument, Beaver recruited fact-finding researchers, twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter, in 1954 and tasked them with placing collectively a reference e-book of details and figures. The primary version was printed on August 27, 1955—the identical day that Hansen set sail for the pumpkin expedition 67 years later. Since then, Guinness World Data (it modified its identify in 1999) has offered over 150 million books. From the longest human tunnel traveled by means of by a skateboarding canine to the longest fingernails on a pair of fingers, over 60,000 data exist on the location’s database.

Hansen’s report isn’t official fairly but. Kylie Galloway, a spokesperson for Guinness World Data, tells CNN that the group has obtained his utility and is at the moment within the strategy of reviewing it.