Bertram fiberglass deck

[ed c.]

How good is the fit with the 3 piece Bertram fiberglass deck?

[Mikey]

Need more detail.
Who's deck?

[ed c.]

The 3 piece deck that bertram used to sell a few years ago. It was a fiberglass replacement. Another firm used to build them also, but the one bertram sold was totally fiberglass.

[John F.]

I had the f'glass deck with the balsa core. Not sure who made it. Fit fine, looked great, worked fine. Its basically a replacement for the stock deck. You have to keep cockpit side panels and the aft teak stuff and aft panel.

[ed c.]

John F., I think that a co. called glasstech made the one you own. The bertram deck was solid fiberglass. I once replaced a deck about 28 years ago on another 31 that I owned and it was the standard 3 piece wood deck.

[CaptPatrick]

Glasstech is the original designer and producer of that deck style, cored with end grain balsa.

Miguel, one of the past owners of Glasstech started his own company named Fibertech.

Fibertech made the decks that Richard Kidd most recently sold and are cored with Divinycell H-60. They're still available from Fibertech in North Miami.

Fibertech Corp
305-635-2818
3767 NW 50th St
Miami, FL 33142

None of these decks were ever made in solid fiberglass. They would have weighed a 1/4 ton per section in 3/4" solid fiberglass.

Oh, and They Fit Better Than O.J.'s Glove...

[In Memory of Vicroy]

I've got the Glasstech deck, installed in the early 90s and its been okay EXCEPT for the hatches. They rattled really badly and wore holes in the underside, resulting in rotting the balsa core around the outsides. With the able (and very patient) help of Capt. Patrick, I dug out the rotten balsa, dried them up, and filled with a magic mix of vermiculite (pot plant stuff) and epoxy resin. Worked great, finised off with a thin paste of microbaloons and epoxy. One of the Faithful gave me some neoprene that I glued on the bottoms to keep them from rattling and they are fine now. Go with the ones with the synthetic core, no sense learning glass work the hard way.

The deck fits very well.......it was already there when I became the Steward (ha ha...nothing "fits' on a B31).

UV

[ed c.]

Capt. Pat, you are correct, I don't know what I was thinking of. I picked up and delivered one to a friend of mine up here in the north while I was on vacation in Miami. He never did install it.