Weird News - Speed-boat record try slips on bananas

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Speed-boat record try slips on bananas

PANAMA CITY (UPI) -- The captain trying to break the record for circumnavigating the world in a speed boat blames the propeller that broke shortly after he left Barbados on bananas.

Pete Bethune, a New Zealander, told the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier that bananas have been bad luck on shipboard since the days when most boats were powered by sail. That was because bananas give off gases that cause other fruit to ripen and become overripe more quickly -- a potential disaster in the days when sailors depended on fruit to prevent scurvy.

Bethune said that the person who brought the bananas on board the Earthrace was a landlubber, a passenger who paid to join the first leg of the race.

"He didn't know any better," Bethune said. "So we decided to not throw him overboard."

Bethune said he hopes to do his Barbados-to-Barbados circumnavigation in 78 days, breaking the record for powerboats and doing it entirely with biodiesel fuel.

But the bananas, or the broken propeller, have put him behind schedule as he limps toward Panama.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International

This news arrived on: 03/14/2007

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