Question about the Viet-Nam war (Ho-Chi-Minh trail)

[BaronNoir]

In a old comic I read when I was young, a factoid that I never found elsewhere was that the Viet-Minh used waterways to supply their forces, by half filling barrels (so the other half was air) and let them float to their destination (the idea being that this is an economic and pretty hard to stop logistic trail). But the books I have mention the bicycles or the Molotova trucks.

 

[Pyoro]

It's on wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_and_Vietnam_People's_Army_logistics_and_equipment
Maybe check their sources? Seems plausible enough, I guess. People build all kind of things with floating barrels on water, so it should work where rivers are useful enough...

 

[krieger11b]

One of the main jobs of the PBRs (Patrol Boat River) was to inspect boats on the Mekong Delta for weapons. I even met a guy who did that job, he said they would buy beer from the Vietnamese but run in through a t-shirt, worried that they might have put tiny shards of glass in it, which is odd considering that didn't deal the 100 other ways to make the beer a health hazard.

 

[Klausewitz]

I even met a guy who did that job, he said they would buy beer from the Vietnamese but run in through a t-shirt, worried that they might have put tiny shards of glass in it, which is odd considering that didn't deal the 100 other ways to make the beer a health hazard.

I suspect it is one of those cases were it is more a placebo for the soul than an actual effective precaution. Why buy the beer in the first place, after all?
In regards to the barrels:
How does one avoid significant losses by barrels reaching the open sea while at the same time remaining 'covert'?