DISQUALIFIED Honorable Mentions

The stupidity displayed by the participants in the following tales stops short of the ultimate Darwin Awards sacrifice. Nevertheless, we salute the spirit and innovation of their misadventures.

Homesick Rafter DISQUALIFIED Honorable Mention Confirmed True by Darwin Darwin says, "Upon encountering this story recently, I had to wonder what I was thinking, including it in the archive. This is definitely a bizarre story, but the fellow on the raft strikes me as pathetic, and possibly disturbed. I removed this from the archive in March 2007." (15 November 2004, Mediterranean Sea) The Israeli coast guard was on alert after a series of terrorist attempts to infiltrate the country by sea. When a patrol crew spotted an unidentified floating object 28 kilometers from shore, they sped toward it, firing warning rounds to alert the potential terrorists to halt the craft. They found not a terrorist boat, but a lonely Israeli man floating on a raft supported by 448 mineral water bottles. Genadi Lambas, 38, was sitting on a mattress with his motorbike and helmet, some water and food, and a few tools. When asked why he was floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea without a map, a compass, or a passport, he said he was homesick. Genadi missed his parents. All he wanted was a chance to sail to their landlocked country of Moldova, where he could have a drink of vodka with them before returning to Israel. He was too poor to afford a plane ticket, but not to scavenge some water bottles from neighboring Dumpsters and put together a raft. He had even made a sail. The Mediterranean Sea is the final resting place of countless ships lost in its unpredictable and dangerous storms. Even a safe passage could be hazardous if a sailor ended up in the wrong place. For example, the prevailing winds were blowing Genadi toward Libya, an avowed enemy of Israel, rather than toward the Balkans. Genadi was unable to explain how he hoped to navigate his raft, other than to say that he was sure he would be safe because he had prayed to "the gods of wind and Neptune and the sea." "I am not crazy," he told the coast guard patrol as they took a photograph of him wearing his motorbike helmet, on his water-bottle raft in the middle of the sea. DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2008 Submitted by: Zvika Reference: Maariv Daily

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