Bertram Sportfish Yachts Coming Back???

I was told by a builder that builds boats 50-75' that it takes 7 boats to basically pay for the mold and tooling and after that they make a profit on the mold/model.

I think 9 35's and 2 58's is pretty impressive......Honestly it's enough to stay in business and viable in a year....... There are a lot of builders that don't do that much.......It also depends on your overhead and size...... Neptunus only builds about that many a year or less I think...... but obviously slightly larger size for example. The custom SF guys only do 2-4 a year......

Yes, but I think they are off to a really good start in a short period of time. Everyone knows my viewpoint on Bertrams of all ages, but kind of nice to see them back, hopefully they'll improve all aspects.......In comparison, Powerplay has sold 4 center consoles.

It is interesting to see what the opinions on cost of tooling and recovery of tooling costs, profits, etc. by those not in the boatbuilding business. Lots of opinion but not a lot of facts, I would not spend too much time on this topic. No boatbuilding company structures their finances so that they must recoup all the tooling up-front. They look at their time-value of money and spread it out over a comfortable time period / production number. And they even take profits during this period as any normal company would be so want to do.

The numbers reported are great news for this re-brand start-up. Lots to be positive about. Entering an election year is tough timing, as boat sales tend to slow down during the election and first year of a newly elected president as we all sit back and wonder what the hell is really going to happen with the economy with the new regime. This is where foreign sales will help with some of the uncertainty, and the Bertram name will help globally.

The next milestone I am waiting to see if the 35 performs as advertised. I am especially interested to see if they break that 40 knot barrier, I don't think the Cabo 35 Flybridge or Express could with higher installed HP? If they do, it will be a winner all-around.

To me, the real shock is that all these sales with no one having any idea how it performs. You're right about the 40 knot barrier. That will distinguish whether it's a true SF or just a Classic Reproduction used to slowly cruise around but not by serious fishermen. The performance Bertram had 15 years ago won't satisfy fishermen today. I can't imagine buying such a total unknown. Yet, many have jumped in and done so. The other thing is we have no idea where the sales have been.

I agree that it all depends on how a builder figures repayment costs on molds,tooling, and even facility. Another thing is a builder could have a facility that is way too large and be unprofitable and if it had a smaller and/or more efficient facility would be profitable. Take Cabo they were very efficient and profitable in Adelanto, even posted a fair net profit in 2012 in Adelanto, as soon as they were moved to New Bern by Brunswick, man hours to build a boat almost doubled and they instantly became unprofitable.

The boat should ride very well with a Michael Peters hull providing Bertram gets weight AND longitudal center of gravity right. I've seen builders really screw that up. I ran a 2006 50' Egg Harbor SF. It rode great with bow fuel tank empty, and aft tank completely full. BUT the boat was built with way too much weight too far foward. SO if bow tank was full of fuel (and aft), or bow empty and aft started getting below 3/4, the boat was a wet, pounding, POS and rode too far bow down. Now if the aft (main) fuel tank was aft about a foot (or other weight) it probably would've fixed the entire ride issue.

The 35' Cabo was an old hull and not even designed by Peters, it only topped out at 35 knots..... a poor comparison. But, if you compared it to the 36' Cabo or 38' which was a late hull designed by Peters, both did come close to topping out at 40 knots.....38 knots I think it was on the 36' (I did 38.5 knots in the 38' WOT).

It is not a poor comparison J, as the Lou Codega designed Cabo 35 was an improvement on the original Cabo 35. And you just proved my point by reaching up to a 36 or 38 MP designed Cabo, and I will even throw in the 40 Cabo, which I would consider the best designed / performing production mono-hull SF in the 35 - 40 foot range. But they are typically 36 knot WOT boats, maybe 38 knots with some optional power but in all cases are more HP than the Bertram 35 is currently specifying.

Well, Bertram's projection was 40+ knots with twin 460's.

Bingo.

And they may finance it as well and reserve cash for other start-up expenses. With a nice pre-release back order on hand, I would expect it to be a non-issue for them.

Even still, the 35' was one of Cabo's oldest hulls (that and the 43') and was out of production a few years before they stopped producing boats. Cabo had been using Michael Peters to design their hulls since around 2003 or 2004, I cannot remember, which goes to show you what an old design it was. The 36' would be the closest comparison, it is a Peters hull, and while I cannot find any performance numbers online, I seem to remember it hit 38 knots as most all Cabo hulls did. What speed the Bertram does is well anyone's guess right now.

The Bertram is supposed to top 40 knots. No live tests I'm aware of yet.

Is the Cabo 35 or any other comparable to the Bertram 35... the Bertram seems to be more of a 'light weight' SF, whereas everything else seems to be a complete S/F - Full back bulkhead, cockpit freezers/stores, in general a bigger boat.

Also, if the B35 doesn't reach this top speed, is it really a big deal, should this type of vessel have more of a focus on sea keeping abilities... there seems to be a focus on top speeds these days. Cheers

Far

If they're trying to market it as a SF, then if it doesn't achieve 40 knots, it will be a disappointment to fishermen as that's largely become the minimum threshold. To those buying because of Nostalgia or as a family boat, it won't matter as much. The fact Bertram has promised that speed on their website makes it more critical too. They realized the importance to fishermen and have used that number over and over. So, yes, it's important. Would 38 knots kill it? No. But if WOT was 34 knots I think it would be very damaging.

Now, that said, I underestimated the demand to start with, so I could easily be wrong.

The sportfishing crowd is the most focused on speed of any boating segment right now. Look at center consoles. We have a 39' that WOT is 57 knots and it's slow compared to many and we were questioned because we went with 300 hp engines instead of 350 hp and sacrificed several knots off the top end. Even Hatteras has focused on 40 knots with their 63 topping at 40 knots with twin 1900 hp and their 70 hitting 42 knots with twin 2600's. Their 45, however, hits 39.1 knots with twin 1136. Now all three of those do offer smaller engines as options, but the tests have been with the larger engines.

If you look at the SF market when Cabo entered and then dominated in the 35' segment, the WOT speed discussion was not as important as quality and fit. Bertram and Blackfin were producing plenty of boats but in what I would call a "sloppy fashion". But times have changed and now you have higher horsepower outboards in triples powering 36' CC and hitting 70+ mph. And the new generation buyer uses boats differently. They are very close in design concept, i.e., Flybridge, functional salon, forward stateroom, good cockpit, but the main difference is Cabo slid the Aft Bulkhead about halfway aft over the Engine Boxes, which was very innovative for its time, while the new Bertram 35 does not, staying traditional to the 31 concept, resulting in somewhat of a "cab forward" design.

I have my doubts if you would see a full customer specified 35 Bertram (Seakeeper, etc.) hitting 40 knots, and I personally do not think it is necessary, 40 mph, 35 -36 knots is plenty in my opinion, especially for a short waterline 35' Flybridge powerboat. But Bertram threw it out there and I am curious to see if it is marketing hype or if they are going to be able to live up to the expectation they have laid out for their potential customers. Hopefully their Design Team will produce and raise the bar for the under 40' Flybridge SF market.

Them putting it out there is why it becomes important. If it's 38 instead of 40, I don't think most will complain. But if it's 35, I think many of those who purchased based on what Bertram said will be upset. I've seen a lot of people over the years who were told a speed on the boat they were purchasing and it came up short and regardless of how nice the boat was they still felt it was misrepresented to them.

I've heard from 2 large well established brokers though, as this boat came up in discussion while we were on a sea trial. They mentioned that some of their customers that own the large center consoles are getting tired of them as they get older and want a boat more comfortable,with more storage for luggage (doing the Bahamas) yet still pretty fast, easy to handle, and some place for people to get out of the weather and sun etc. enter in the Bertram

BTW. I ran a 63' GT with the 1900's and it was light on fuel 1/4 tank and 5 people. Yeah it did 40 knots in 1 direction WOT, but only 33.5 in the opposite direction. I've never seen a boat lose so much speed going in the opposite direction. 1-2 knots is what I usually see at most.

To be honest if you have an idea what tooling costs you do know that between 5 - 10 builds should cover more or less your costs.

What those ten builds will not cover is the new factory. That is for sure.

As what will keep in the short term Bertram ongoing I think OB pretty got it head on. It will all be how much Gavio keeps his passion for boats running.

So far one must Give credit where it is due. He has returned Baglietto to the best times, made Cerri a much known brand and a more important player in its field (semi custom sport yachts) and beyond (see semi-displacement line of super yachts), so I would not put it off him that Bertram might have a better future ahead.
The trick for Gavio I think for him will be not to lose his passion for Bertram, which is more possible I think if the company stays a small operation.
For example I do not imagine the Bertram operation to be what Viking is at the moment, more something like a bit smaller to what Hatteras is doing in recent years.

Agreeing with all Liam wrote, I'll add one more caveat. I don't know how Gavio's boat building is doing financially. I think marketing wise and line development he's done great. However, regardless of passion, at some point any boat builder gets tired of losing money. I hope he's already to the point of profitability. While the Gavio Group can absorb some losses for a while, at some point you don't want to continue taking profits of one business to cover the losses of another. The Gavio Group has had rising sales over the last five years and sales are now 3.4 billion euro. However, profits have not shown growth.

Gavio is the perfect person to own a boat building company in terms of the two criteria that are so rare to find in one person today. That is a passion for boating and the finances to build the company right. The ongoing costs of building the boats, including tooling, will be manageable. The challenge is covering the added corporate overhead and servicing any debt. That includes debt assumed in facilities, in purchasing boat companies, and in start up.

I personally hope the new Bertram is a dream boat and fills a niche no one else does right now. Then I hope the other models are successful. A lot will depend on the quality of these initial boats. However, none of this is new to Gavio. I'd be worried if this was his first time but after Baglietto and Cerri, I think he probably has this down.

Boats like Bertram don't interest me personally, but I'm excited about all this. Finally someone comes through. Not dead like Post and Cabo and Ocean and many others. You can go back to Tollycraft even. Time after time people have bought the brands and they've soon been dead.