Rocky wrote:Capt Pat, then given this theory about maintaining light and strength with enough flexability, it would make more sense to use this Airex you spoke of which is more plastisized then the easy shearing of the other foam? It seems the foam this bertram has did not have a core material that was strong enough within itself.
That's pretty much what I see... The two most important aspects of a cored hull must be adhesion of the skins to the core, and the strength and flexibility of the core.
Airex, and also Klegecell, exceed the internal strength and flexibility of Divinycell. Epoxy exceeds the bond strength of either polyester or vinylester. Both epoxy and Airex/Klegecell are more costly than the ester based resins and Divinycell core. Epoxy is also technically harder to work with than ester based resins.
When Bean Counters trump Engineers bad things can, and often do, happen...
The bean counters are now in everything because money has become king. The American public (High on ethics, low on logic) buy on price. Industry figured that out, thus the outsourcing of manufacturing to places that don't have unions, environmental regulations, workman's compensation, etc., etc., etc. And we wake up wondering why we have such high unemployment. Even with such a big ticket item like a 63 foot boat, they saved on an unseen component which probably raised their profit margin. Surrender on quality and you've given up your product advantage. What it will cost them on legal fees, product PR, and lost sales will more than make up for what they may have saved on the cheaper component parts. That's where logic comes in. A seeming shortfall in the bean counter mentality. I still blame top management for letting it happen. The king should be quality and the money will come. Whether this boat hit something or not, this is costing Bertram a lot that they'll have to spend millions on to make up.
So when you go online to buy a airline ticket to Miami Beach, it gets listed by price, and you(we) by the cheapest one. ya know they pay copilots on the commuter you fly 2 grand a month- hey they've got a hundred hours! We're our own worst enemy.
I just received Sport Fishing, it has the specs on all the 2010 boats.
Bertram 63, enclosed bridge
loa 66'9"
draft 5'3"
weight 91,500 lbs
fuel 1,650 gal
power T 2,000hp diesels
cost $3,277,659
more money than I thought,very expensive fishing wreck!
Russ Pagels wrote:I just received Sport Fishing, it has the specs on all the 2010 boats.
Bertram 63, enclosed bridge
loa 66'9"
draft 5'3"
weight 91,500 lbs
fuel 1,650 gal
power T 2,000hp diesels
cost $3,277,659
more money than I thought,very expensive fishing wreck!
If I recall, the 63' that sank was "Just Purchased" but an older boat. A bit less money.
What sticks out for me is the 2010 is 91,500lbs...the one on the bottom came in at 110,000lbs??? Is this correct, if so then are they really using more coring now. For their sake, I hope they got a better handle on the process.
It does seem plausible that a compromise from a buoy strike at just the right place could cause the whole thing to blow apart—especially when the boat is blasting through the water, bouncing on and off waves at 30 kts being pushed by two thousand horsepower. The Coast Guard or whatever agency is in charge of these things should be doing an investigation into this. If there are in fact paint transfers and gouges that match and the boat did sink where the buoy is, then the boat should be brought back up and studied by qualified independent engineers so that anyone with a similarly constructed boat can figure out what their risks are. Maybe the lesson here is that no 100,000 pound boat made of cored fiberglass can suffer a blow right in the flare of the bow at the typical height of a buoy at cruise speed. Bertram seems to want to talk about how strong the buoy is and that the evidence is compelling that the boat hit it. Shouldn’t they be instead talking about how they are going to design something that can withstand this type of initial insult? Maybe the better question is whether this type of failure is inevitable considering the weight, thrust and speeds involved? A scary question for the mathematicians is: does a buoy give a much harder or different impact than a steep seven foot chop? Maybe the architects and engineers that design these boats have a new type of failure to study and learn from. If there is hard evidence that this boat struck this buoy and sunk immediately afterwards then I think that all of us who venture offshore in big fast boats should be rooting for an unbiased scientific investigation into what happened so that the boating industry can learn from it. I for one would like to see Uncle Sam blow some money studying something that my fishing buddies are curious about for once. Maybe many of these big boats have a similar Achilles heel. Most rehabbed B-31’s are retrofitted with monster strut pads to compensate for what experience proved was a serious vulnerability. The fix is relatively easy and inexpensive and now seems obvious. Maybe the result of this incident will be that all the big builders will learn to make their bows able to withstand a buoy strike without a catastrophic hull failure. My guess is that what happened says more about 100,000 pound 35 knot boats than Bertram's quality control.
Hello,
I am new here. I have been following this mysterious saga on this and other forums for some time with great interest. I find it difficult to believe the boat just fell apart, the foredeck blew off and the transom fell off due to a delam issue. There have beena lot of "what ifs" and I have yet another which I posted (post#42 in that thread) on THT as below:
Further to this, if you look at the picture of the bow quarter there is a pretty clean break about where the midships cleat and foredeck should have been.
Any takers?
I'm of the theory that the boat hit something large and difficult to see; something that should not have been there and was owned by the government - all of which explains the silence of those involved. It is more than possible that negotiations are presently underway to settle all claims equally quietly while the continued speculation leads everyone further from the truth.
mike ohlstein wrote:Rough water, can't see the buoy. Bow goes down and the pulpit catches the chain at the bottom of the buoy. Bow comes up, chain rips the foredeck off.
Bow goes back down, (still at 20 knots) and the rush of water blows out the amidships bulkhead and the transom.
Hello Davey Jones.
there was no pulpit on that boat, or a anchor on deck, it was stored and the boat had no pulpit or anchor davit, I also believe the report was 3-5's, I dont think thats rough water for a 63' boat
there is no silence from the captain- he says he did NOT hit anything.
Until last night I was virgin when it comes to blogs. Last night I had a great time on my first date with Yacht Forum bantering with their arm chair captains about the sinking of that 63 Bertram off South Carolina and what role the Bill Perry artificial reef debris, tons of sunken ships and subway cars, might have played. The editor of the blog has been totally abused by somebody who told him his “exclusive†photos of the sunken Absolutely were fresh, taken on Nov. 11 after the Nov. 6 sinking. And that is what he told his elderly readers. And they started speculating how bad the boat had faired as the result of the mysterious collision. The captain did not see what he hit or know what it was. But looking at the photos, like we all did, it seemed like an awful lot of damage from one impact incident. So, like the rest of them, I speculated and wrote a piece on my blog-- south east shipping news --- just google it—titled Not Your Daddy’s Bertram.
Then I learned that the yacht had been down for three weeks, part of it during that Tropical Storm Ida, before it was found and down longer before it was photographed. That changed a lot, I suggested. It explained why the transom was missing and part of the hull crushed. So when everybody sobered up this morning they started feeling kinda silly having spent the past few weeks and all that blab and speculation based on those misleading photographs. Carl the blog god didn’t much like it when he discovered the cat was out of the bag. So he banned me from his blog, and selectively edited the posts concerning the Bertram, deleting most of mine and making it seem like he always had the correct date and information about the damage to the yacht.
Then somebody, not me, accused him of capitalizing on the flood of speculators and the misfortune of Bertram, the captain and the owner to build traffic to his blog and attract more advertiser. At that point he decided that these new people who had entered the blog with honest information had corrupted the thread and it was time to shut it down. (That is what he said but this thread is like a drug, he can’t stop using it.)
So I learned that history can be rewritten in a matter of a few hours. Now he continues to display the meaningless photos. He says they were taken at the end of November, which is correct, but he fails to mention the wreck occurred Nov. 6 or that he had ever posted anything misleading about the chronology.
I sent Carl a friendly e-mail because he once labored on the Allen Family Plantation at Southern Boating where I was once editor. In it I also warned him about this guy --- Hatami Hatemi Hashemi, who seems to be the guy who goes by Shazam-- who actually sells knock-off Bertrams. I told him he had been stirring up the waters against Bertram without even buying the appropriate advertisement at YF first. Then I asked him if I could do penance, or submit to flogging to get back on Yacht Forum and talk about the dangers of these shallow water artificial reefs. But he didn’t respond. So if you guys are interested and it ain’t against the rules I’d love to talk about artificial reefs risks in shallow water on this forum.
Former editor Southern Boating, Florida Shipper,The Boating News
Thanks for the welcome. Thanks for the stern advice. Rules are rules.
My blog ---http://seshippingnews.typepad.com-- since you asked-- is about shipping issues, ports and trade and ships and things, not so much about yachts and sport fishing. However I am always attendant to things that threaten or impact navigation for all mariners that includes Wright Whales, containers adrift, the end of Loran C next month, Harbor Pilots, and my recurring concern about unsafe artificial reefs in shallow water.
The Absolutley incident seemed to me a vehicle to discuss floating containers and these shallow water reefs because I was amazed that none of the blogs I read even talked about a posssible container impact or the reef debris or the risks they pose. They I got gonged my first time out. And I went off on a tangent. Sorry. I will stay close to the thread.
Former editor Southern Boating, Florida Shipper,The Boating News
Rick,
Welcome.
Go to the third page of this thread and read my "container" concern. Seemed to have slipped right by most or they got it and kept on going.
Beating the dead horse?
Mikey
3/18/1963 - -31-327 factory hardtop express, the only one left.
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
-Albert Einstein
Rick,
Make sure when you include a link that you use the URL tab when posting. That way people can just click on the link without having to copy and paste into another browser window.
I added the url quotes for you........ this time :)
Rick,
I think you and I are barking up the same tree, though maybe from different sides. Have a look at my earlier post on this forum.
I recently found discovered the photos circulating the internet were provided by the plaintiff; I find that a little odd. The initial captioning of these pictures seems to me to be a bit biased as well and I think that has set the generally negative tone toward Bertram and the whole episode.
Many have said there is no damage to the hull below the waterline from a strike. How do we know that? We have only seen a third of the bottom of the boat. Until we see the port running gear intact, many possibilities continue to exist.
Rick: I posted over on the Hull Truth about a custom charter boat out of Virginia Beach that hit a container back in 2002(?) off Rudee Inlet. The only thing that saved him was a watertight bulkhead he had installed because he had lost another boat to a similar incident earlier. There were good pictures back then of the big triangular hole punched in the bow. I think a thread about navigation dangers would be well received. Maybe also discuss the problems with the status of the GPS system since Loran C is going away. Thanks.
I can't say I agree with all you wrote, some harsh statements against the Captain. Without being there its leaves alot to pure speculation...but it does shine new light on the subject.
The Captaiin and his girl could be what you infer or it could be she is the best first mate anyone could have asked for who also happened to be his girl. When we used to travel with our boat, my wife made a dam good first mate...good eyes, watched the water, knew the boat and how to handle it.
Not seeing the bow...now that is a good point. I think I was on that 63 or similar one at a show. I couldn't see anything up front...then again I'm short at 5'9". Hell, I have to stand on the footrest of a friends 48' Viking to see comfortably when cruising.
You are correct in your judgement of my tone. The captain is a real person and his mate may have been a real salt. And I don't know any difference. I think my years in the Keys and around the magazines (and my wife's ex broker boyfriend) have corrupted my attititude toward yacht broker/delivery captains. But I can't take it back. So I guess I will have to stand by it until I am proven incorrect in my assumptions. I wish it wasn't so. I'd love to give delivery captains the honor they deserve.
Former editor Southern Boating, Florida Shipper,The Boating News
I wonder if a lawyer was to subpoena the warranty records of the manufacturer.
What would they find?
How many claims have been paid in the past for similar failures?
How many boats repaired/ repainted for smaller issues?
How many of the same size or larger craft?
Capt says the boat fell apart. This would surely show how widespread the issure could be.
Could you imagine the settlement? All hulls 6 years old and under have to be X Rayed and repaired if defects are found at the manufacturers expense.
It would probably kill the company especially if that company had already missed an interest payment on its loan.
Rick I read your blog and I question your motives for posting on this site. A bunch of guys playing what if on a boating site is acceptable but an industry insider shopping his blog in defense of a boat builder poses questions. Why here, why now. Your type of article is more suited to YF and THT than our little corner of the universe. The thing that really caught my eye was your use of the term "decorative delamination" to describe the other 63s structural problem. Maybe you can explain how the top layer of the laminate is only decorative. A man with your credentials should recognize this.
You also seem a little too enthusiastic in your criticism of the delivery captain. In fact it is pretty common to have a captain and significant other teams crewing on a yacht. You speculate on his speed and course, you imply he was paying more attention to his girlfriend than the sea. Why would you pose these wild scenarios without any evidence. Do you really believe as your blog article stated, the anchor snagged a wreck and the nylon anchor line caused the boat to self destruct?
My wild speculation on what happened is that the "decorative delamination" at the bow failed when the boat came off a wave causing the front deck to peel off. I have no reason to doubt the captains word. Nothing in his statement is inconsistent with the damages to the boat. I'm surprised no one is sticking up for this guy. He gave his statement, got a lawyer and shut his mouth. That is what a good captain should do under these circumstances.
Hey Rick this a friendly site so if I'm off base school me and I'll apologize. This captain is known in my neighborhood and by all accounts a decent guy. You have posted twice on this site, came to the defense of a multimillion dollar potential customer of yours at the expense of some poor captain and you don't own a Bertram.
Don't lend a hand to raise a flag aboard a ship of fools!
Obviously boats just don't come apart. Unfortunately we will never know what really happened.
Not to defame or defend anyone, I have seen some very noble people sing a tune when what whatever went wrong, could mean big dollars to them. The jury is still out and will remain out unfortunately.
I don't even think a court will be able to sort this out. I guess the key would be, find the anchor. If it is dug into something on the reef then maybe that will tell the story. Raise the boat, if there are threads of rope along that line on the hull that you say it cut through, then your theory gets stronger.
If I were Bertram, I would want to collect every piece of that boat to prove the bashers wrong. But by not collecting the pieces, they stand a good chance of having a judge toss out the case against them.
The old Bertram would have had the faith to raise that boat. Back then the lawyers for them would have felt comfortable raising that boat. Today, the lawyers will say, leave it down there as long as possible, then no one can tell who is right or wrong.
The shame is, if it was poor construction or just a fault in the process, they will never know, and maybe not realize the correction they need make to the construction process.
In any event, it is all speculation at this point.
I got in this thru the backdoor. A boat hit something in an artificial reef area is what I heard. I went to the place where the Plantiff has posted some of the images to see what it looked like. I was told the fotos were fresh from Nov. 11 after the Nov.6 sinking. I looked at the images and read the comments. And I kept asking myself what could cause this state of wreckage? I never could figure about the transome. But I took what I could find out about the captain's statement, the location, the weather conditions and the end result. I spent days on it. Based on those Nov. 11 images, the only things I could conclude were that the boat hit something and the captain didn' realize what happened. And that is what he said. Next I wondered what he could have hit. Container seemed possible. Bertram suggested the buoy. I checked what the buoy marked. And it turned out the buoy got hit by something. But what it marked was more interesting to me. It was a mine field of large debris sunk in shallow water. I looked at that streight line cut down the port side. I studied the mechanical drawing of the way Bertram attaches the bow cap to the hull. And all I could figure was -- along with other evidence -- the anchor line sliced the bow cap before, in the middle of or during the moment the captain stuffed the bow into the wave at 30 knots.
And I wrote it up in a context that explained the history of sport fisherman boat building and how the new boats are not like the old ones and we ought to not expect so much of Our Daddy's Bertram. And I wrote it and stuck it on my blog.
Then I find out the photos were not taken on Nov. 11. On that day Ida blew through the coast with huge waves and strong winds. The photos were actually taken Nov.29 when SeaTow caught up with the wreck and anchored it.
And that made me very mad. I was one of dozens of interested parties who spent hours researching and blabbling and arguing and thinking how that much damage could be done in one incident. But that was all a lie. The yacht was down for weeks, during an intense storm in shallow water that is filled with other milspec debris. I was challenged to explain the condition of the yacht at five days down when it actually was 25 days down after a severe storm. It was like discussing where the manufacturer went wrong and the paint peeled off the Titanic.
As for the delivery captain, some of this might stimulate him to think deeper into the things that happened along the way. Visibility is not a plus on a 63 and a confident young captain might overlook some incident, especially if standing strong on the bridge of an indestructible Bertram battlewagon.\\
The points I made are that boats just don't fall apart, certainly not ones manufactured by people as responsible as Ferretti and Bertram. Even Pintos don't fall apart without something that happens first. It defies the laws of motion, physics and hydrodynamics.
Something happened to that bow that started the process of failure. It was probably the kind of thing only a diligent, focused captain might have noticed before the bow and anchor locker gave out. When it is your boat you can hear it and feel it. If you are enjoying a free cruise to Fort Lauderdale on someone else's boat, when you realize things get bad, it is too late.
Yours is a fair question and deserves this kind of an answer. I am defending the captain and his mate when I suggest something happened in that artificial reef area that could not have been anticipated. I am suggesting that a sequence of bad events happend and that the captain, by his own admission, did not realize it was time to slow down, until it was too late. Stuff happens. So let's secure the debris we dump in shallow water and let's slow down in shallow, novice dive areas. Lets put automatic markers that unfurl when containers go overboard. Lets keep standards high for delivery captains. And let's file float plans, so we know if or when our delivery captain set the wrong course or went astray.
Former editor Southern Boating, Florida Shipper,The Boating News
As Bruce said: "If you want to start a new thread on artificial reef risks in shallow water then do so as an aid to navigation and general information to our readers."
Also, you need to learn how to break up your posts so they are more readable. Your reply to Ed as one on-running paragraph, without line breaks, was a chore to read without going cross eyed.
Everybody,
It is evident to me that while there has been almost 100 pages of speculation devoted to this topic between three forums, (YF-62 THT-28 B31-8), absolutely nothing has been accomplished, proven, disproven, or otherwise solved. Frankly I'm getting rather bored with the whole discussion...
Take it to the bank that I am about ready to lock this topic and restrict future similar topics concerning this sinking unless/until there is real and verifiable concrete data as to what happened to this boat. I agree with Carl that likely there will never be any solving of this mystery.
Bertram will likely settle in whatever way they can and that will be that. Until no one even remembers this situation will the speculation cease.
I will allow a few more posts, but this discussion will come to an end before the 9th page starts...
Please close it! i am tired of all the speculation, facts are facts, say them and be done with it. thats the problem everyone has to much damn time to speculate and research someone elses problem. YA it sucks it sank, but let the Professional licensed engineers and the wonderful legal system sort it out, its none of our business anyway and honestly I feel if we wanted the lengthy BS that some of the new post have, we would read yacht forms more, reading about it on there was enough to make me never go back to that website. Its the great ocean, shit happens out there, be glad no one was killed!
I beg to differ in that when a manufacturer sells a product to the public, its the publics right to know whether that product is safe or operator error caused the failure.
Since the US and much of the world is litigation happy, many of these instances are settled behind closed doors and those settlements are kept confidential.
If Bertram builds boats that fall apart, then the world needs to know. If they don't, then the world needs to know.
Ever watch the movie 12 angry men? Speculation can lead to purposeful conclusions if done without a soap box.
I am very surprised in a good way that you guys aren't marching rank and file to the beat of the Bertram drum. I do think the topic has gotten out of hand in the court of public opinion in favor of the plaintiff and it pains me to see the Bertram name sullied. Hopefully, Bertram has more cards to plav.
As Patrick mentioned, it's the right moment to sit back and see how it plays out in the courts.
Cheers,
I am very surprised in a good way that you guys aren't marching rank and file to the beat of the Bertram drum.
Our loyality pretty much ends with the end of the Classic Bertram Era... Our loyality is more limited to quality than brand name. And I think that Dick Bertram would have wanted it so.
And with that said, the topic of the sunken 63' Bertram comes to lock down on this board. It'll be interesting to see how long the topic lingers around on the other boards...
