Cubans try to sail to US - in a car

Eleven Cubans trying to sail to Florida in a 1950s Buick car converted into a tailfinned boat have been intercepted at sea by the US Coast Guard and are to be sent back home.

Marciel Basanta Lopez and Luis Grass Rodriguez, the two men who turned the classic car into a floating vessel, tried a similar stunt last summer and got caught – they set out for Florida in a 1951 Chevy pickup with pontoons made out of empty oil drums and a propeller.

On Monday, the men set out again, with four other adults and five children, relatives said.

The Coast Guard intercepted the group en route to the Florida Keys, picking them up about 10 miles off Marathon, about 90 miles southwest of Miami, activist Arturo Cobo said.

Cobo said the US Coast Guard sank the Buick.

The Coast Guard refused to confirm the floating car’s status, but it used machine gun fire to sink the first vehicle-powered barge.

“My uncle is very brave,” Eduardo Perez Grass, a nephew of Grass Rodriguez, said in Havana, adding that the others on board were Grass Rodriguez’s wife and sonMarciel Basanta’s wife and their two children and a third couple with two children.

The Buick’s doors had been sealed to keep water out and it was powered by its original V-8 motor connected to a propellor, said Eduardo Perez Grass, who was among those on the earlier attempt to reach the United States.

“My cousin isn’t crazy. He wants to be free,” Basanta Lopez’s cousin Kiriat Lopez, who lives in Lake Worth, said.

Under US immigration policy, Cubans who reach US shores generally are allowed to stay while those caught at sea are usually returned. Immigration officials interview Cubans intercepted at sea to determine if they have a credible fear of persecution at home, but most are still returned.