On the Grand Line: The Goffstown Pumpkin Regatta

Autumn in New Hampshire means many things. Freshly fried apple-cider doughnuts. Leaf-peeping. Hikes. But for the residents of the southern Granite State metropolis of Goffstown, the fall season means something entirely different: traffic at a standstill, the burrrr of a forklift’s hydraulics, and the fashioning of gigantic pumpkins into seaworthy vessels.

While the tradition of pumpkin regattas exists throughout the country, few towns seem to take to the intersection of gourd-growing and naval architecture as much as the people of Goffstown. This year’s pumpkin regatta really came as part of a larger celebration of giant pumpkins. The festivities opened on the morning of Saturday, October 15, when this Reviewer was tasked with stopping traffic so that the pumpkins, nay, future seacraft could be paraded through town and weighed.

Although the idea of stopping traffic for a cavalcade of pumpkins might sound ridiculous, the giants were—as their name suggests—gargantuan. The smallest of the 10 or so gourds featured at the weigh-off came in at an impressive approximate thousand pounds. The heaviest weighed more than a ton, clocking in at over 2300—less than 300 pounds below the new world record. Indeed, if it doesn’t seem that mere starchy vegetables could ever grow so large, I assure you that they can. Before the morning of the 15th, I had never seen any plant so large in my life.

After the weigh-off, regatta organizers and volunteers transported the crown jewels of this year’s pumpkin harvest, again by forklift, to an assembly area near Goffstown’s Piscataquog River. Here, the butchery begins. After the pumpkins were flipped over on their more angular sides, which cut through the water more effectively, the riders of each pumpkin claimed their vessels and went to work. Regatta veterans resorted to electric saws to cut through the pumpkin’s foot-thick hulls as each soon-to-be sailor, bucket by bucket, threw out the guts of his or her craft. The 2300-pounder, unfortunately, did not so much have pumpkin guts as it had pumpkin blood—for some reason, it was nearly filled to the brim with an amalgamation of seeds, fiber, and goo. 

The growers of the gigantic squash took careful watch of the participants as they gutted each pepo. A former regatta winner gave me the lowdown: giant pumpkin growers consider their seeds to be trade secrets, and each regatta participant is bound by honor to make sure that his or her pumpkin’s grower gets all the seeds from that pumpkin. The operational security aspired to by regatta organizers and pumpkin farmers might seem ridiculous to some (and it certainly did to members of the crowd, who let their children kick and climb on the massive produce). But when one pumpkin can be worth $10,000 and earn a family worldwide recognition, who are we to judge?

After the interior of each pumpkin was safe for piloting, volunteers helped each navigator affix to his or her pumpkin what experienced regatta-men know as “toilet seats”—eponymously shaped wooden frames upon which each pumpkin had its boat motor attached. The sailors and their helpers used foam to ensure the hulls were watertight. Then, they began the long hard work of decorating the exteriors of their craft. The Goffstown YMCA emblazoned their makeshift yacht with Ys while other organizations chose to follow the event’s Wizard of Oz aesthetic with rainbows and movie-inspired props.

At this point of the 15th, I unfortunately had to leave the beautiful town and miss out on viewing the actual regatta, to be held on Sunday, October 16. It sufficeth to say, however, that the 2300-pounder—the largest pumpkin to ever be piloted in the Piscataquog—did not win the several hundred-meter race down the river and through the Goffstown bridge. Indeed, the winner of the event ultimately did not seem to be the mere pilot of a pumpkin but rather the people of the town as a whole. For how many other municipalities in this great nation of ours can boast such an absurd yet wholesome and unifying tradition?

If there was one feeling I felt during my short time at Goffstown’s pumpkin festival, it was that of community. On that morning and afternoon in southern New Hampshire, I witnessed, for the first time in far too long, a crowd of people not on their phones. Residents, new movers, out-of-staters, next-town-overs all gathered on the shores of the Piscataquog that day not to record or share but to see, to experience, to live. And that, they did together. It should make us mourn, as residents of Hanover, that our college town has nothing like what Goffstown has in the celebration-of-autumn department.