cuban junkyard wars
Familiar with the TLC show
href="http://tlc.discovery.com/fansites/junkyard/junkyard.html">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.
align="left" style="margin-right: 5px;" />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
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&ncid=514&e=7&u=/ap/20030725/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_truck_boat">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!
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