Familiar with the TLC show Junkyard Wars? Apparently some Cubans have seen enough episodes to know how it works.
On Junkyard Wars, two teams have 10 hours to each build a machine capable of meeting a specific challenge. On one episode, the teams had to build speedboats capable of reaching an island in a small lake and returning each team member one-by-one to the mainland. One team used old metal drums, welded together, as pontoons for bouyancy.
Today, twelve Cubans were escorted back to their island nation after they were spotted by a U.S. Customs aircraft as they attempted to travel across the Florida straight in a modified 1951 Chevy truck, the AP and the Miami Herald report.
The Cubans similarly used old 55-gallon drums as pontoons to support the truck and attached a propeller to the drive shaft for propulsion. Top speed in the water? 8 MPH.
"We arrived at the coast in the same truck and assembled everything in six hours," Eduardo Perez Gras, one of the would-be immigrants, told the AP. "If they had let us get to Key West, we would have been able to drive it right onto the sand."
Amazing.
Instead, the U.S. Coast Guard picked up the junkyard dozen and sent them back to, possibly, try again. Unfotunately, the truck/boat was sunk as a hazard to navigation. Maybe next time, they will work on a submarine, like those that were built in another Junkyard Wars episode.
Cubans, you have TWO hours remaining!
Posted by jonathan at July 24, 2003 11:39 PM