Via the Cornell Chronicle [2014-09-24]:
Relay teams hope to squash their competition at the first Big Red Pumpkin Regatta on Beebe Lake Saturday, Oct. 4. Hosted by Cornell Flotilla, a graduate student club, racers will decorate their giant pumpkins at noon, while the paddling starts at 2 p.m.
The racers must be out of their gourd – or, actually, the racers must stay in them. Five teams each with four people will have enough room in a 300-pound pumpkin to fit a single paddler. In a relay, the paddlers will race 100 meters four times around Beebe Lake. The grand prize: bragging rights.
Since the spring, Peter DelNero, a graduate student in the field of biomedical engineering, and his club colleagues, have been lovingly cultivating giant pumpkins (Cucurbita maxima) on several acres of the Dilmun Hill student organic farm. “I can’t wait to get out into the pumpkin boats. It’s going to be a riot,” says DelNero.
How’d it work out? See A tradition is born: the Big Red Pumpkin Regatta [Cornell Chronicle 2014-10-07].