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A good friend is contemplating buying one out of perhaps these 3 Bertram models.
I cannot give any advice to him, primarily in what concerns seaworthiness in bad weather.
Does anyone have any comparative facts for these 3 boats?
How well they handle a head sea, a following sea...
What engines to prefer, which ones not to consider.
Thanks in advance.

Yannis

What years are the boats. On the 38 depending on the year there have been changes. Also what engines are in them?

The 38 is a beast of a boat and will pretty much take what ever mother nature can throw at her. Depending on the model and year, I might go with the 38.

i was the capt. of a 38' Bertram in a violent storm in 12' seas, no generator, no GPS, radar the only instrument working in the massive lightning storm. had to shut down due to one bad alternator the other not able to keep up with 10kw radar so in middle of the storm driving on the blind. the storm passed and that 38" handle those waves with no problem. luckily the VHF radio was out so we could not call out a pam-pam no need to bother the coast guard at Cape May. the Bertram is a 1979 model repowered with twin 3208 Caterpillar at 435hp. each.excellent workmanship on repower from Stuart FL marina. boat cost $ 29,000.

Thank you Tony and Bob,

There have been numerous mentions about the virtues of the 38, both the II and the III.
What is perhaps a topic with fewer mentions is the behavior of the 36, probably because fewer members have owned it. There were perhaps fewer boats produced, who knows.
It would be nice to know if the 36 is seaworthy enough, if not to match the 38, at least to perform well in Bertram weather. And to know of any particular issues that a prospective buyer should be aware of.

Might be useful?

http://www.yachtsurvey.com/boatreviews/ ... moppie.htm

Thank you Cam.
I wonder if there is somewhere any evidence of the 36's performance in the water.

Question - are you asking about the convertibles or the express (moppie, 38 special, etc.)?

I shopped the convertibles extensively and chose the 38III. I'm not as knowledgeable about the express models though, I'd imagine the hulls were the same with the expresses being generally a little easier to push with less sail area and weight and a little less tender on the roll. As others have pointed out, the 38 went through an evolution from the original 38 widebody to the 38III to the 37 and finally the 36. From what I understand, the biggest change in the hull was from the 38 "widebody" to the 38III. There seems to be general consensus that all were good sea boats, while a little tender on the roll and wet in certain sea and wind conditions, with the ray hunt designed "widebody" holding a clear edge over the later variants due in part to it's larger beam. If your friend is shopping on sea handling abilities of the hull alone, the original ray hunt hull might be where you'd focus him.

For us, because it was to be a family boat, we chose the 38III. It was very difficult to find a widebody with an updated, wife-friendly cabin layout. Most are (rightly) used and set up as battlewagons. We were considering the 37's but preferred the v berth of the 38III considerably. Ours had the hanging locker instead of the silly forward sink, which we also preferred. Although I didn't sea trial both hulls, from my research I doubt you'd notice much of a ride difference between the 38III and the 37. I think it would come down more to the layout differences, what updates have been made, what engines were in them, and how they have been maintained and updated.

on the engine question - just as a reference my 38III with 8.3L cummins cruises comfortably anywhere between 21kts (2000 RPM) and 27kts (2400 RPM). I generally cruise her at 2200 RPM which is about 23-24kts. I think once the engines and props are "dialed in" I should be burn 27gph at that speed between the two engines, getting me right about 1 statute mile per gallon. However for some reason right now one of my engines is burning 1.5-2gph more fuel than the other one, even though I just had the props re-conditioned so they should match much more closely.

I think you'll find with the 3208's you'll see speeds limited to the 20 kt range with around the same or higher fuel burn for overall less efficiency and range. With the detriots you may get similar speeds to my cummins but efficiency more like the 3208's. There's also the question of whether you prefer 2 strokes or 4 strokes, which I'm just not knowledgeable enough to get into. I would not consider any of these boats with gasoline engines.

Cam, I’ll look into that, thank you.

Incoming,

Thank you for your insight.
Just to make things more clear, a boat in the med is almost never used as it would be used in the US.
A boat in the med is almost solely used in the summer as a vacation hangout, in lieu of a summer house or a hotel room for your vacation. They are therefore liveaboards. Very seldom, if ever, would any such boat be used for fishing.
Also, fuel prices in europe in general are anywhere from €1,20 to 1,60 per liter for gas and a little bit cheaper for diesel, so, consumption becomes a decisive factor in any boat purchase, hence gas boats of this size do not exist in europe. Similarly, detroits are avoided not only because of consumption and noise, but also because when the time comes to sell the boat, the value of a boat with heavily consuming diesels will be obsolete.

Therefore, if youre in the market for a 36-40ish boat, like my friend is, you would be looking for a convertible that offers the amenities required for the job, you would be looking for a boat with relatively economical diesels, and (only for the few who know the basics) you would also be looking for a boat that has the V hull necessary to provide less pounding in the uncomfortable summer weather of the med.
For those who do not know the basics, I would assume the 90%+ of all prospective buyers, they would get carried away by the corian tops and the plush materials and settle for the multitude of the mostly flat hulled - many cabins competitively priced Princess, Cranchi, and all other italian, german,scandinavian etc boats, but also Tiara, Pursuit etc, all of which are nice boats but NOT suitable for Bertram weather conditions. They will soon find out their error but it will be too late.

Therefore, the 38 wide body, although perhaps the most seaworthy of the 3 boats in question, is too heavy, too wide and wet and consequently such a heavy consumer of diesel, that its probably ruled out.

What I would be interested to find out is how the 36 and 37 compare in terms of handling bad weather.
Bad weather, is also different here than there. Most of the time there are waves of, say, 1 to 2 meters high which are spaced very close so that your choice of speed is the result of a carefully selected hull. The point is to avoid banging and ...breaking either the boat or you back. A deper vee is a clear advantage for this kind of weather.
Except for Bertrams and Blackfins I sincerely cannot think of any other boat brand that can do the job.
There exist many deep vee express type boats, but they are not suited for living aboard and are therefore all ruled out too.
Tough life!

Yannis

As far as the 37 and 36 go, maybe good boats but in bad weather I will take the 38 every day of the week.

incoming (i can barely write with that avatar) we have 3208 at 435 hp not the common 375 hp so we make 23-24 knots, what is the HP on your CTA`S 8.3 Cummins the common ones were 430---450hp millions made. 480 hp up are expensive electronic style with common rail injection about 15% more efficient.detroits are not to be considered unless like Yannis mention a liveaboard that gets moved twice a year.

I've got the 465hp "480ce" variant. Basically the one where they took the all mechanical 450 diamond and added an ECM to eek out a little more hp. However I'm working to get them propped "conservatively" to get closer to the 450 diamond fuel burn (and thus hp) curve as I've seen some pretty compelling arguments that longevity-wise that's the way to go.

Right now I'm getting 13.1-13.5 gph on the starboard engine and about 15 gph on the port engine at 2200 RPM and about 24 kts. I can go up to 2350 or down to 2000 and the speed and fuel burn change more or less linearly, giving me about the same mpg efficiency throughout that range. That's AFTER having the props reconditioned and re-pitched. So something is driving the fuel burn on that port engine to be considerably higher, more than i think could be attributed to counter rotation. Once I get that figured out I should see 23-24 kts at 26-27 gph.

Trying to figure out a few things to help my friend, I'm reading in an ad that some boat (a B37) has "General Motors" engines.
Are these the Detroit Diesels?
Are these DD's 2 stroke? What's good or bad about 2 strokes? 2 or 4 stroke are better?...
Thank you.

Yes, they are Detroits, and yes that means 2-strokes. Probably 6v92's. I've never owned them, and don't consider myself an expert, but the research I did suggested the Detroits are less fuel efficient, louder, and smokier than modern 4 strokes or previous generation mechanical 4 strokes (such as the cummins c-series). That's probably not a fair comparison - a more fair comparison is probably the 3208 cats, which were common in the Bertram 38 (not sure about the 37). In that case they seemed to be comparable in terms of speed and fuel efficiency at any given hp rating.

The main thing with Detroits is the re-build and maintenance cost. Its seems most people tend to view the 6v92's as not worth the cost to rebuild at this point. For 3208's on the other hand, parts and technicians that know them inside and out seem to be so ubiquitous that people tend to keep them running, at least around where I live on the East Coast of the U.S.

I think a big factor for your friend might be what access he has to qualified and reasonable service providers to keep them running. That situation could be FAR different on your side of the pond then ours.

Also, I just did some quick searching on Yacht World and saw a couple of 6v92 powered B37's in Greece. They look to be about twice as expensive than they would be here in the U.S. Not sure if that's par for the course over there, but I know when I bought my B38 I got in a bidding war with a guy in New Zealand who wanted to buy the boat and ship it out there. Maybe it's worth looking at U.S. boats to expand the available options?

Incoming,

Thank you for your thoughts.

Bertams in europe are twice as expensive than in the us. Of course, there is almost never any gas boat, above 7-8 meters. All boats in the med are diesel. Nobody buys a gas boat, except those with outboards. Those few who made the mistake to buy an inboard gas boat,simply cannot resell it.

As for the engine service parameters, really any engine mfctr has a qualified office in at least 2-3 cities/ports. So either a yanmar or an american engine (usually preferred for bigger boats as their owners dont care so much about consumption) or volvos make the list.

I understand why a DD motored boat in the med would be worth almost nothing...irrespective of how much it sells for in yachtworld, if you buy it in the med you cannot resell it. There are a few people who buy them...so for example at my island you can see a B43 with DD’s selling for 50k still noone is interested. So only doesel bertrams are expensive, yet when i tried to buy my boat from the us, the transport cost and the necessary vat’s, CE certificates, 110v to 220v etc ended up to be waaaay more expensive, so I bought locally.