'Expedition Impossible' eliminates The Fishermen team in sixth stage

Expedition Impossible eliminated its sixth three-person team during Thursday night's broadcast of the new ABC reality competition's sixth episode.


The Fishermen became the sixth team eliminated from the adventure race after they were the last team to arrive at the sixth stage's finish line in Morocco.

"After all is said and done, I couldn't have asked for any more out of [Gus Sanfilippo, a 48-year-old fisherman from Gloucester, MA] and [Nino Sanfilippo, a 43-year-old fisherman from Gloucester, MA] even though we had our disagreements. At the end of the day, we're still family, blood and every proud of how it went," Joe Sanfilippo, a 44-year-old fisherman also from Gloucester, MA, said of his brothers.

"I'm dying to get back in the whale house and sit my ass down on that boat," Gus added laughing. "But family is the most important thing. I love these two guys, and I don't care how they treated me this whole expedition. I love them two."

Expedition Impossible's sixth episode began with host Dave Salmoni explaining to the eight remaining teams that they must use a hand line to cross the Abede River, travel half-a-mile on foot to a local town and search for a rug stall.


Dave then told the competition's teams they would depart the fifth stage's finish line in waves based on the order they had crossed the fifth stage's finish line.

Since Fab 3 -- which consisted of Ryan Carrillo, Kari Gibson and A.J. Gibson -- finished the fifth stage in first place, they got a head start and departed before any of the other teams.

The Gypsies, The Football Players and The Cops were then able to take off together and were followed by The Fishermen, No Limits, Country Boys, and California Girls.

Upon finding the rug vender stall, the teams were required to search for a carpet containing five large holes amongst hundreds of carpets. Only eight rugs had the correct amount of holes -- one for each team -- and once a rug was discovered, they were instructed to strategically place it over a local street sign to reveal the location of their next checkpoint.

The Fishermen struggled the most with the task because although they found the carpet they needed, they failed to figure out what sign they were supposed to use. Their confusion forced the team to fall deeply into last place. 


However, The Fishermen finally located the sign and learned they had to trek two miles to the base of a waterfall.

Once the teams arrived at the waterfall, they learned they had to choose between jumping from a 40-foot cliff or rappelling down the adjacent rocks. The jump was clearly the faster yet more intimidating challenge of the two options, but all the teams decided to put their fears aside and take the plunge. Upon landing, they were required to follow the river downstream to their next checkpoint.

After the teams jumped off the cliff, they ziplined over the rocks of the river and were instructed to choose a set of locked paddles, memorize the symbol on their lock and then swim to nearby cave. Once at the cave, the teams had to look for the key featuring the exact symbol that matched that of their lock. Only the correct key could successfully unlock their paddles.

A couple of the teams quickly learned the hard way they should have paid more attention to what their symbol looked like. Each symbol on the locks, whether it was a scorpion, monkey, etc, varied only slightly in its design on four different sets of keys. Fab 3 realized they didn't memorize the specificity of their symbol but still ended up guessing correctly.

The Cops and The Fishermen, however, weren't so lucky. They picked the wrong key because they had forgotten the details of their symbol. They acknowledged how careless they had been to not pay closer attention.


The teams were then required to kayak down treacherous rapids and use a GPS system to navigate exactly four-and-a-half miles to the location where they would find a goat cave. Kayaking proved to be extremely difficult as many team members capsized and could not manage to paddle their kayaks in the direction they needed to go.

After the teams found the goat cave, they were instructed to look Northwest directly out of the cave to spot the finish line -- which was located behind the Abid Kasbah on the hill. The rest of the sixth stage's course forced the teams to go back down the mountain, paddle another mile and then climb 300 feet to the finish line.

The Gypsies -- which consisted of John Post, Taylor Filasky and Eric Bach -- hustled and arrived at the sixth stage's finish line in first place -- their sixth first-place finish of the Expedition, including how they came in first place at the halfway mark during the fifth stage.

Following The Gypsies, Fab 3 came in second place and No Limits subsequently secured third place.

The Football Players and Country Boys then arrived in fourth and fifth place respectively, while The Cops managed to cross the finish line in sixth place.


California Girls finished in seventh and were finally followed by The Fishermen -- whose Expedition Impossible experience came to an end.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski