Smashing pumpkins

NORWELL -- It took just a split second for the arm of the 30-foot catapult to snap around, launching a small, round pumpkin from its nylon sling high into the air, over the treetops, and out of sight. A loud crack followed -- the sound of an 8-pound pumpkin crash-landing half a mile away.

"It's kind of a strange hobby, but someone's got to do it," said Weymouth resident Dana Drew, whose four-man team is preparing to defend its world record next month at the 2006 Punkin Chunkin Championship in Millsboro, Del.

Over the next week, the team will scour area farmers markets for the perfect aerodynamic white pumpkin, and make the final tweaks to the Fibonacci Unlimited Two, a 3,000-pound hydraulic catapult that laid waste to last year's competition when it hurled a white pumpkin 2,862 feet.

That "chunk" -- as the long-distance launch of a pumpkin is called -- went far ther than any other catapulted pumpkin in recorded history.

"We're just hoping for the perfect throw," said Richard Arnold, vice president of H.H. Arnold Co., a machine shop in Rockland that supplies much of the labor for the catapult. "If we get a good first [toss], we might crank it right up to where we've never been before."

The pumpkin chunking quartet -- Drew, Arnold, of Norwell, Bruce Blatchford of Stoughton, and Pete Rosa of Norwell -- have funneled thousands of dollars and hours of their lives into perfecting the catapult.

"Most people can't imagine watching a pumpkin leave at the speed of sound," said Drew, who is also president of Jack 'N' Jill Child Care Centers. "The hang time when it is up in the air... the whoosh" of the catapult arm pivoting around -- all add to the experience, he said, as does the blare of the locomotive horn mounted atop the catapult in competition.

The challenge this year is not just to win: Last year, the team outdistanced their nearest competitor by 600 feet and even beat some of the air cannons, which compete in separate Punkin Chunkin categories, along with centrifugal machines and trebuchets.

This year, they want to push catapulting to new levels, sending the pumpkin at least 3,000 feet. To add to the challenge, the heavy rains this spring damaged the pumpkin crop in the region, leading to a scarcity of the dense, white lumina pumpkins that fly the farthest.

The team's members didn't always have such lofty ambitions. When they attended their first Punkin Chunkin in 1998 -- "Twenty-five thousand rednecks, drunk in a soybean field, watching people throw pumpkins... world-class punkin chunkin," as Drew affectionately recalls -- they knew little about the sport other than that they wanted in on it. They stumbled in their early attempts -- like the time they dropped a pumpkin into the middle of the crowd, and the time they accidentally launched a pumpkin sideways, slamming it into a competitor's truck.

Eventually they began to work out the kinks and finally fixed on a unique hydraulic catapult, named and designed after the principles of the 12th-century Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci.

Fibonacci was famous for discovering a sequence of numbers, in which adding the first two numbers gives the next number in the series. The Fibonacci series is well known for its ability to predict the shape and form of flowers and pine cones -- but the team discovered that by incorporating the series into their design, they could unlock the secret of catapulting a pumpkin more than half a mile.

During practice, the team works just as it would during competition -- securing the pumpkin in its sling, turning on the hydraulic pump that builds pressure in the four heavy accumulator tanks painted bright orange, and then counting down to release the arm that flings the pumpkin at an estimated 250 miles per hour.

Their success is reflected in the "honky-looking" 3-foot-tall trophy with a shiny jack-o'-lantern on top that they have brought home from the last two Punkin Chunkin contests.

The group treats its obsession nonchalantly -- as nothing more than a hobby. But this isn't stamp collecting. They estimate their catapult is worth about $200,000 in parts and labor. Each year they make a nerve-wracking drive to Delaware with the 30-foot catapult in tow, sparking the interest of other drivers and quizzical glances from state police.

But it's all worth it, they say. There's the unrivaled experience of launching a pumpkin high above the horizon, where the tiny speck seems on the edge of taking flight.

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.