Bertram 630 Sportfish Sinks?

Carl, Thank you for the time you put into your post with the stills. I have (2) questions for you: 1) Are the stills from the video that was taken from the diver the owner hired, or from the diver that Bertram hired. 2) Does the video have any “shots” of the hardtop/tower and/or any of the “missing parts” (transom, deck, fish box, hatches, etc, etc) if so, would you be willing to post them?. It would help paint a better picture of things.

With the seas building “green water” comes over the bow, it races up to the bridge, and “stops” at the isinglass/hardtop overhang. When it’s a full on attack it’s over the hard top. If the bow was stuffed, (and I believe this could be the cause to make the bow to rip off as far as it did), the water entered the flybridge causing the damage.

The consol itself is screwed & tabbed. The moving top of it is attached to 2 pistons that are plated to the deck & attached to the consol base by a 6’ long HD piano hinge.

People keep bringing up stuffing the bow, yet earlier in the thread the conditions were reported as nominal, so which is it? In order to really "stuff the bow" at speed in a boat like that, you pretty much have to be running down hill in 8+' seas. Running into them, you may pound and slam, but not "stuff" unless you are slow and in big seas, and that reduces the forces involved.

I believe I'd heard that seas that day were under 5'. Quite frankly I've run downhill in 8's with many boats and never saw water come over my bow. I've done over 14' with a 43' Ocean and never saw it although that required a bit of work to make sure it didn't happen. I'd tend to think that with the waterpressure, the air trapped under the helm, the boat having lost much of it structurial stability and hitting bottom hard enough to break off the transom that the helm just let lose and went down hill (back) when the boat stopped moving.

if i'm not mistaken, this accident occured around 6th or 7th of Nov.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/data/stdmet/Nov/41013.txt

waves at Frying Pan Shoal Buoy never exceeded 6' around that time, with windspeed of aroudn 15kts or so.

hardly battlewagon breaking, bow stuffin conditions.

Did the first responders, the fishing vessel ( Pacific)try to tow the bertram backwards? Passing a line / cable thru the scuppers and attemting to tow it could tear the transom off . It would be my first thought to try to get the bertram into shallow water or into the closest harbor to save $500,000 worth of engines, transmissions, generators and other salvagable machinary! If they did are they liable?

That would have put it near flat calm (maybe 3') at the location on 11/6. Must say I was hoping to see the bottom peeled back indicating that water pressure peeled a delaminating hull or they hit a submerged object. Mr. Myers makes a good case and the captain is definitely not in my "good book".

Yeah, no, in those conditions, there had to be prior weakening to below minimum acceptable ability, for it to come apart even if it did hit the bouy viewed in the pictures. Even the potential energies including a bouy strike (and where it would have hit would be a glancing blow) on that bouy should not have enabled the result seen there. There are issues with that boat that existed before the sale that should and will be handled by either the manufacturers or dealers insurance. It will be quite possible to argue that they delivered a vessel that was either manufactured incorrectly or damaged in the hands of the dealers possession, or a combination of the above, because honestly, that's what I'm seeing the result of. I'm not seeing that boat diving under the water at a great rate of speed, and I didn't read about it in the crew account nor see it in reported injuries. Besides, destruction like that bow requires great force, and that force comes from translating kinetic energy which in turn slows the vessel, I'd like to interview the captain a bit better to get a better feel for the levels of energy carried to when. Things just don't add up correctly on that result vs the potentials available. The only tragedy here is that the owner has to deal with this rather than his insurance company. If he thinks he had insurance bound and he didn't, the captain has to answer for that.

Tying off to a 41 ton anchor heading for the bottom is a good way to send 2 boats down.

It's a real shame that Bertram has lost it's way over the years and is nowhere near the quality that they used to be. Unfortunately, it seems fairly obvious that the lack of truly skilled labor and proper marine construction practices are not being performed at that yard any more.

Cored bottoms have become very popular in recent years, and the number of failures has diminished even though the number of fully cored hulls has increased. Viking yachts is fully coring hulls, Westport has been fully coring hulls for years and with no problems. Christensen is another example. The core must be totally sealed. If water penetrates the core around a through hull or other fittings then you can have big problems. When cored boats are built - the correct way to do this is to remove all core material near any through hull penetrations and replace with solid material - then drill the holes through the hull through solid material only. When this is done properly at the factory and by third parties after the boat leaves the factory - a cored hull can be just fine. If this is not done well - water can penetrate the hull and cause problems.

If a cored hull is constructed PROPERLY, it is indeed stronger and lighter than a solid glass hull but in many production boats, especially "price" boats, they just slap them together and sell 'em as quick as possible to increase the bottom line. Many "price" boat maufacturers do not even use solid glass around the thru hull fittings.

I wish this owner the best of luck in resolving his issue. From what I understand, he was not insured at the time of loss so at this point his only hope of recouping his investment and being made whole again will be up to the courts. I imagine if he cannot blame Bertram, he may be out of luck (and ALOT of money).

I'm glad nobody got hurt.

It doesn't matter, it should not have given up under the energies involved in the accident even if it occurred as Mr Myers said. That level of impact energy under those conditions is to be reasonably expected therefor designed and constructed to at least not catastrophically fail as we see there. Even with prior damage, it was sold as a new vessel with manufacturers warranty making the dealer liable for any damages done while in care and custody. If the vessel delivered can be shown to have been deficient of the standards to be able to safely fulfill the job for which it is intended then the sales contract is voided.

The captain is not in my good books either. Seeing this is actually annoying to me, it does not lend a good name to captains. The only thing that could mitigate that is if the owner ordered the sailing in full knowledge that it was uninsured.

It depends on the size of the fishing vessel, how big is the FV Pacific? also a 200 ft tow line or cable in 80 ft of water negates a lot of risk to the towing vessel

There was nothing about that damage that indicates that mode of failure.

How about the transom being gone???????

The salvage value there will be less than the cost of the recovery. The only reason it will get salvaged is for legal purposes to prove defect in the hull. Hopefully it will not come to that, but it may. I think though that with the pictures we see here and the video it came from along with a few salvaged pieces of hull for testing at a lab and some expert testimony will do the job. I doubt the entire wreck ever gets salvaged.

Vessel Name: PACIFICS USCG Doc. No.: 1026244
Vessel Service: COMMERCIAL FISHING VESSEL IMO Number: 8938693
Trade Indicator: Fishery Call Sign: WDC4193
Hull Material: STEEL Hull Number: 182
Ship Builder: MASTER BOAT BUILDERS INC Year Built: 1994

Length (ft.): 73.7
Hailing Port: WANCHESE NC Hull Depth (ft.): 12.1
Owner: DELORES OF WANCHESE INC
HWY 345 P.O. BOX 369
WANCHESE, NC 27481 Hull Breadth (ft.): 22
Gross Tonnage: 113
Net Tonnage: 33
Documentation Issuance Date: October 21, 2009 Documentation Expiration Date: November 30, 2010

What prior damage?

While it was still FLOATING the VALUE of the machinery was not compromised if I arrived on the scene aboard a 115 ton dragger to rescue people and the bertram was still floating I would put a line on it and attempt to tow it

I am sure we would have heard about the salvage boat tearing the transom off by now. BTW, the boat should be able to hang by its transom. The boat is quite light underwater. Remember, the fuel tanks are bouyant as is the foam core and most everything except the drive train is either bouyant or near neutral. That vessel is not close to 41 tons under water, probably less than 2 tons negative bouyancy once sunk.