bertram31.com

Just got the O Kay from Capt. Patrick to join your site. Really glad to be here and just wanted to say hey. I have a 25 Bertram that I am restoring with V Drives.

welcome aboard

nice boat!

Welcome!

"Morning Wood"-"Standing Member" redundant, no?

Today is off to a good start. Thank you!

Glad I could be of help. TGIF

Tailhook Tom saying welcome to Morning Wood -- based on names, I do believe we will get along just fine!

Welcome aboard


Harry Babb

Welcome to the only place for all things Bertram...with a great bunch of guys to help keep your 25 in top shape..Bob Higgins

Welcome.

Welcome to the sandbox. Watch out for the clumps.

Couldn't come to a better place. Welcome!

Thanks so much for the warm welcome.

Morning Wood,
Welcome aboard, where did you get your 25 and what year is it. Like the nom de plume, sort of like Dick Whacker. Anyway welcome to the site.

I bought the boat about 2 years ago. It was on Shelter Island NY. The guy I bought it from had a 31 and inherited this one from family in Mass. The boat is named CAVU. 1968 model that spent winters indoors. The hull is great like a time capsule. Very minor crazing on the flybridge. I am AWLGRIPPing the boat and have 1 complete 350 Chevy. Working on another. I was in contact with a gentleman on Long Island who specializes in V Drives. The numbers that I provided to him indicated 80s vintage Paragons. I plan to let him go through them. He said they are worth going over them and he seems to be the authority. His name escapes me but I was referred to him from guys on the 25 site. This model has a completely open wheelhouse with no station. So I can build cabinets and a dinette eventually.

i believe the guy you are talking about is paul. when i blew the reverse on one of my V drives i took it to him (after a season with no reverse). he is outstanding and reasonable. if he can't fix it...throw it away.

Welcome aboard. I'm across the Bay from you on the Rappahannock. When the weather gets warmer and you're looking for a place to go this could be it. Several of us over here.

Yea Randall that would be Paul owner of long island transmissions. We deal with him on a wholesale level for ZF parts.nice guy to deal with .

Absolutely. We love Taylors in Deltaville. We love the Northern Neck and try to cruise there at least once a season. We usually start at Coles Point,then Reedville,Horn Harbor,Tiffany's and Deltaville. We keep a boat at Wicomico Yacht Club. The Wicomico on the eastern shore.
If you get over here on the shore we can take good care of you.I have a spare car or 2 you can use to go to Ocean City. We had a 31 a few years back come over with a teak cockpit. Really well kept boat.

Welcome... Ahh the 25 sweet.. had one with the vees & 360 chryslers.. it flew.. the guy I sold it to had the 360s replaced with new 350 chevys.. It really flew. to ther point it was squirlly. He being a surfer said it was too scarry to hold wot.. lol
Anyway have fun . any questions Im sure one of us has an answer.,
Wayne

wayne....you mean there was another surfer with a 25 with V drives? wonder if he surfed off the boat.... where was this?

Since you know the area, we are on the eastern branch of Carter Creek. As you enter the creek the Tides Inn is straight ahead. Turn right and come up the Eastern branch. We are just below the Carter Creek bridge. Open sided boathouse with the orange 31. Same here for land transportation and open bar.
C.O.D.

Welcome aboard Morning Wood, I was just wondering if you were a Rodney Carrington fan?

DQ

Randal.. he always hung out below Newport harbor.. emerald bay & points south. The forbidden zone.. (MLPA has a 28 gasser now..

DQ
Love Rodney Carrington and Bob and Tom Show.

By the way I am envious of your call sign morning wood ------- I remember those days!,',.&@$. anyways great boat and welcome aboard.

I was not sure Capt. Patrick was going to let me in with that call sign.
But after reading your guys post I thought I might chance it. And thankyou Capt. Patrick. I use it on The 25 site, and have behaved myself so far. Just a little sick sense of humor runs in my family.
A little story, My son's friend's parents just divorced. So my son being concerned that we might divorce asked my wife " Mom, are you and Dad getting a divorce?" My wife said absolutely not, Why should he be happy.
He spun around on his bike and rode away. This is the same woman that accusses me of being uptight . She said when you fart dogs come running.

Yep...you'll fit right in.


Welcome aboard!

Carl

i can say for sure this forum is the best bunch of guys in the world . i know because i am also with NCRS (national corvette restorers society) forum for collectible corvettes 1972 and older. a much bigger forum and a lot of very mean nor tolerant people.OMG your radio has a white backlight light instead of green tint in a 1971 vette , that it----- we are not talking to you!!!

Bob -- remember the pics of the 31 with outboards bolted on her? Kip's boat makes sense for him, and, he is treated the same as anyone else on here -- make a post knowing that your nuts are in a vise and they might get squeezed just a little in good fun!

welcome on board , i love those 25's

You guys are great. I have read some of the great post before I joined and I am glad to be here.

Roger that on the 25s....I had a 1972 that I ran for 17 years. Came with 165 Mercruisers which, other than they were sea water cooled and rusted away pretty quickly, were fine engines. In 1984 I took drunk and spent a huge sum and installed Volvo TAMD 30 diesels with duo prop outdrives. A total diaster I was able to overcome by sheer will power aied large sums of time, patience, & money.

The Volvo diesels are just plain awful - over engineered to the extreme and the parts sellers wear ski masks and carry blue steel revolvers. Anyway, I was able to nurse them along for about 9 years and probably caught 75 marlin off her with the Volvos...then sobered up and got my present B31 FBC with the 250 Cummins 6BTAs, perhaps the finest engines ever made.

To this day I consider the B25 to be the finest boat of its size ever built. One of the original Faithful, da Judge from Galveston, has a 1962 B25 with original blue hull that has been in his family since new. He replaced the 165s with the Mercruiser 4 banger 135s and Alpha One drives and it has diesel-like economy and performance. And there is enough room in the motor box for them with ample maintaince space to keep them up.

UV

welcome in !!
my first Bertram was a 25 Bahia and i've been hooked since then ....

welcome, my first trip to the hudson canyon was on 25 bertram. great trip the cockpit was full of bombs.lucky we didn't blow up...Russ

dam russ you must have been young back then, would you do it again. lol

needless to say i am a fan of 25s. i spent 3 years looking for the one i finally bought. while there are no "bad" 25s the inboard version is just a different and to my way of thinking ...better boat. in any guise....the best 25 foot boat ever.

My goal is to be somewhat weight conscious with the engines. I am not sure that is of concern based on some of the set ups I have seen. One 25 I know of has a tower and extra fuel. And is a proven go get em boat and her owner raves of her performance. But I really like the look at the Riva/Bertram 25s. They seem to sit the most balanced in the water. I think part of that stems from the extra glass in the deck area supporting the house forward. But they also have a set of exaust manifolds that are copper and bronze. So my thoughts were to outfit my 350s with HGE aluminum manifolds. The set up will be FWC with the risers being raw water cooled. The 25 inboards I have seen, seem to sit heavy where the chine hits the water in the aft section. But I only the photos to go by and have no in person experience. I just felt that weight reduction where posible will enhance performance and nmpg. Just wondering if you guys have any thoughts on this.

I likewise ana fan of the B25. Have had one since 1970 and was my introduction to Bertrams and in lead to me getting a 20 and more recently a 31. I still have all 3.
One thing I liked about the B25 were the fiberglass stringers - no wood to rot.

I likewise am a fan of the B25. Have had one since 1970 and was my introduction to Bertrams and in lead to me getting a 20 and more recently a 31. I still have all 3.
One thing I liked about the B25 were the fiberglass stringers - no wood to rot.

One thing I liked about the B25 were the fiberglass stringers - no wood to rot.

Not to fear the wood core in the early Bertrams. The wood was strictly just a form to layup the fiberglass around. The layups are so massive that if all of the wood turned to mush from end to end, no structural strength would be lost...

Later, most boat builders figured out that they could save considerable time and materials by making polished forms and building stringers that popped off the form and were glassed into the hull as hollow units. Some were even fitted with limber holes to keep from trapping water.

first off my 25 inboard had wood stringers. as Patrick pointed out.....absurdly overbuilt. i had to modify one a bit for a heat exchanger.....not fun. the boat is a tank. as to how it sits in the water its not about weight.....its about where the weight is. my scuppers sat well above where they sit on a 25 with two 4 bangers and O/Ds. i had 360 chrysler heavy duty truck engines. the inboards have a much more bow centric CG. however i would put scupper one ways on any 25.

The weight of the Volvo diesels (something like 1,100# a side) put the scuppers about 5" underwater at rest. I had to repaint the waterline to match. It was self-sinking.

Squatted pretty badly even with large trim tabs so I added the plastic Doel-Fins to the outdrives and that made a huge improvment, jacked the stern up a lot at speed.

UV

Vicroy wrote:The weight of the Volvo diesels (something like 1,100# a side) put the scuppers about 5" underwater at rest. I had to repaint the waterline to match. It was self-sinking.

Squatted pretty badly even with large trim tabs so I added the plastic Doel-Fins to the outdrives and that made a huge improvment, jacked the stern up a lot at speed.

UV

UV
I thought my dads 19' Ski boat with a Mitsubishi Diesel was overkill and too much weight...but a pair of Vulva's in a 25?? LOL...man, I should switch to what you were drink'in.

Your so right about over engineered...I had a Vulva Gas I/O years back. Guess they thought it was too easy to just run a hose with a pair of hose clamps as they decided to machine Cast Flanges with O-rings for joining a Coolant pipe on a short run. Of course using aluminum the pipe rotted pretty quickly and when removing I found the O-Ring Housings were badly corroded. Good for me I had a machine shop and opened the Grooves up to the next size O-ring, made up a new tube and I was as good as new in short time. Parts were about two hundred plus and I would have had to wait a week for them to come in...ridiculous.

The hoses are the perfect example. Also use of banjo fittings and rigid hi carbon steel tubing for low pressure fuel lines instead of flex lines - they cracked all the time. And did I mention stuff fell off the motors like a long-haried dog getting out of the water? Mine slung parts all over the place. All the brackets broke real quick. The alternator adjusting irons borke in under 100 hours, I got new ones that broke in less than 50 hours. I made my own out of stainless that lasted. And speaking of alternators, the geometry of the pulleys was just plain bad - twin v-belts that would not stay tight and the belts ate up in a day. I bought belts by the dozens. The pulleys the belts run on rusted if you looked at them. The raw water filter system was a total joke - mostly plastic that cracked under the vibration. And the duo-props, the hubs were GLUED in place and when the hubs spun out - which they did all the time - you could not repair them. I finally started driving roofing nails between the hub and the prop to limp along vs. paying a grand for a set of shoddy-ass aluminum props. Did Imention the raw water pump was built so that any leak in the front seal shot sea water DIRECTLY into the camshaft housing and into the engine oil. Or that the oil pnas were of hi rust steel and were prone to just eating up.

I was able to get the Vulva US distributor to extend my warranties a couple of years since I was one of the first victims of their horrible engines and constantly had to threaten to sue them into the stone age to get anything out of them.

On the other hand, the Cummins is laughably simple - one serpentine belt you can change in 15 seconds with only a half inch socket handle....but I put 2,000 hours on mine before changing the belts for the first and only time. All the water goes thru plain ole hoses with clamps. There was a problem with the Sherwood raw water pumps which was solved by Tony Athens making aftermarket pumps and parts far superior to the originals.

Vulva sucks.

UV

you are so right !!!,

but it will fit perfect , on the Morning Wood..............
:wink: :wink: :wink:


They should make mooring weights of all of them !

Gert van Leest wrote:you are so right !!!,

but it will fit perfect , on the Morning Wood..............
:wink: :wink: :wink:


They should make mooring weights of all of them !

LOL

My wife use to drive a Volvo station wagon. We called it the Vulvanator. Funny she never refeered to me as that. My parts fell of sometimes too.

My buddies boat is called "Morning Wood" and his dads boat is called "old wood".