A Los Angeles Artist Grew a Kayak Out of a Mushroom and Paddled It 26 Miles to Set a World Record

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14, 2026 — Sam Shoemaker found the mushroom growing near his studio. A while later, he was sitting in it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with a fin whale for company.

The Los Angeles artist paddled a 12-foot kayak grown from the mycelium of a single wild Ganoderma polychromum mushroom 26.37 miles across the Catalina Channel, from Catalina Island to Cabrillo Beach on the mainland. Guinness World Records this week recognized the trip as the longest solo journey by fungal mycelium boat, and it will appear in the Guinness World Records 2027 book.

The crossing itself happened on Aug. 5, 2025, and took just over 12 hours. Shoemaker has spent more than a decade growing dozens of kinds of fungi into sculptures and art, and his work explores fungi as a replacement for plastics and other nonrenewable building materials, UPI reported.

This was his second mushroom boat. The first, a 15-footer, launched in 2024. For the sequel, Shoemaker and his cousin Laza made a fiberglass mold off a kayak they bought on Craigslist, packed the mycelium inside with biodegradable textiles and plant-based materials, and let it grow into shape for seven weeks. Then came about three more months of drying and testing before they sealed the 107-pound boat in shellac and beeswax, so the whole thing stays biodegradable.

The ocean did not go easy on it. On his website, Shoemaker describes rough swells and currents in the early miles, getting seasick and "hallucinating shapes in the water," and doubting the whole trip. Things smoothed out around mile 9. That's when the fin whale showed up and followed him for miles, "swimming directly behind me like a curious dog." At mile 17 he ate lunch: a peanut butter and honey sandwich with Szechuan chili flakes.

The hardest stretch, he wrote, was the last couple of miles into the marina against a 14-knot wind. Guinness put it more simply. He finished the 12-hour ride "a proud yet sodden record holder," with strong currents and bad weather along the way, as NDTV also reported.