Bertram 630 Sportfish Sinks?

I agree with everything you say - what kinda set me off is the "Bertram Seeks Bottom" acronym, and the dismissive tone of some minority opinions here. B/C it's generally been a Bash Bertram witch hunt from the beginning, and it started with "no way he hit buoy - to now "no way buoy caused damage". So we move on -

I'm not sure what happened here either - but one thing I am certain of - "something" had to cause the foredeck, top shoe box section to be ripped off - it could not have just come off with air pressure, from prior weakness / defect - b/c it looks like this thing could still float if it had it's transom.

Question - does the anchor protrude from pulpit on this rig like other's? If so, it may have stuffed bow just prior to buoy, grabbing buoy's chain with anchor, then causing a "chain" reaction - pardon pun. No one thought a low voltage wire would bring down a 747 either - we have all seen very usual events trigger a catastrophic result - Anchor can't be far, just follow rope & chain

I realize I'm a bit late to the party....but Thank You, Carl, for the great effort and posting of the pics of the Boat That Is Suffering From A Case Of Excessive Humidity (<-----trademarked, BTW).
Having very quickly read the posts since, what, yesterday, there's a lot of food for thought and some mysteries.

Would like to address your photo #23 regarding the transom, 'cuz I have an idea based on something I saw years ago.
Bertram 54 pulls into the yard one afternoon...for repairs. This boat came from the Great Lakes and the story was that she stuffed a big wave. The pulpit jutted out from the bow at a crazy angle and had evidently tried to part ways with the foredeck but hung in there. This was an older 54 with windshields or at least used to have windshields--the center one had blown out, apparently from the force of the water rushing aft atop the foredeck. What was really amazing was that that plug of water blew out the salon door (it was still laying in the cockpit when the boat arrived in MIA) and all the cockpit hatches were missing.

I would surmise that BTISFACOEH lost her bow (will not speculate as to how) whilst cooking along at a pretty good clip, and a whole s*itload of water hit the transom.
Didn't look too carefully, but is the salon bulkhead still in place? Door? Window?
Also, no mention (that I saw) of how close is the boat to that Perry buoy?

One last thought: Onthepins, thank you for providing some needed levity during such serious proceedings. Now, "Heah's five dollahs, go to da movies."

A proper salvage operation which will have a derrick barge involved will be a quarter of a million dollars. I do not recall reading of attempts to take it under tow. I'll go back and look. That would be something typically reported in the incident report.

That would have caused a diagonal and downward force which would have shown torsional damage. There is no torsional damage evidenced there outside what was evidenced by the electric wires. All the damage shows a tearing off vertically like if your hood comes open on the highway. I had not been on a Bertram witch hunt. I stated several times we didn't have any evidence, I suspected but wouldn't conclude without evidence. I see what I see, and I see adhesion problems in the hull. It was not as strong as it was engineered to be. I see where it tore loose on the port side, and it tore right where it would hit a typical floating dock. Better analysis required to see if that was an issue, but given other indicators of adhesion problems which are an indicator of a condition where materials will be brittle, it's not a bad swag. I think that this was the scene of several degrading circumstances all coming together at the same time to cause that level of catastrophic failure given the level of surrounding circumstances.

The potential of the initial boat trying to tow it backwards is just an answer to an anomalous issue surrounding a secondary failure. The primary failure is at the bow.

a) the F/V is registered at 33 net tons as opposed to the Berts 41. b) you would hook up a sinking 41 ton boat to the boat you need to make a living for a 20 + mile tow which would take maybe 4 hours all the while the Bert is trying to find the bottom and you're opening yourself to a world of liability for no pay?

Correct me if I'm wrong but if they had towed the Bert to safe harbor wouldn't they have been in line for a salvors percentage of the value of the usable salvaged machinery?? also the submerged weight of this 41 ton vessel is not even close to 33 tons

What do you think that amounts to in this case? It would probably be less than $10k, and who's is going to pay it? Compound that with loss of fishing income which can be substantial and is cash in hand... I wouldn't have taken it under tow. BTW, some insurance policies exclude damages from taking vessels under tow. If those terms existed, no way I'd hook up to a sinking boat.

“That would have caused a diagonal and downward force which would have shown torsional damage. There is no torsional damage evidenced there outside what was evidenced by the electric wires.”

I disagree. I do see torsion damage very clearly and I think OTP may have something. I will comment on this in greater detail soon.

Could you please using the post number in this thread let me know where you are seeing damage indicative of an anchor gab at speed?

This is THE boat and it doesn't look like it has an anchor pulpit or exposed anchor:

http://www.**************/boats/2006/Bertram-630-2073929/Lindenhurst/NY/United-States

Has anybody dove on the buoy in question to see if it has any underwater damage? It may only weigh a couple of hundred pounds but it is attached with a very stout chain to a large anchor. There may even be a big piece of Bertram stuck on the chain.

If anything, maybe it was secured on top of the deck somewhere?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was a 40+ knot boat, no? Does anybody know what speed they were supposedly running at when this happened?

(Forgive me if I missed the post somewhere. I've been gone for a LONG time )

Typically on a boat like that you'd cruis between 27 & 33 kts depending on conditions.

Typically....but does anybody actually know what he was running at?

Like I said, this was a 40+ kt boat...we all know the two schools of thought on "fast" deliveries versus "slow" deliveries...

...I'm just curious as to whether the Captain was a "fast" or "slow" captain.

Not that my opinion matters, but I think that there was possibly some serious internal damage to this boat before it even left the dock. Whether it be from poor construction, poor blocking, poor docking...etc.

What bothers me is the other delaminating situations that have occured with Bertrams in recent years.....

If I play my cards right, 5 to 10 years from now, I'll be looking at sportfishing boats in the 50-60ft range. Will I consider a Bertram?

Absolutely.

Will I consider a "FEB?"

Probably not.

Just my .02

The captain reported going 24 kts.

In 15 kts of wind, it'll be slow in that boat otherwise he'd be beating the snot out of himself. While the boats will run 40, that's in flat water. A well found vessel will be able to take more of a beating than its occupants.

As for past delamination issues, I don't even consider them. There are delamination issues observable with this specific vessel. I have never been a fan of Ferretti after working the first 68' I did years ago. That crew quarters was a death trap that luckily the owner would not subject myself or my partner/deck/stew/mate to and we got the VIP while onboard.

is it just me, or by the time the rescue boat got to them, the 630 was already gone….? Keep in mind this 630 went down in 10mins…. Not much time for anything really.

far

If it took 10 minutes to go down I suspect the transom came off when it hit bottom.

Henning, i read somewhere she went down in 10mins, correct me if thats wrong though. cheers

also the radar reflector on the buoy... its about 1mm alloy, with alloy rivets (rivets cant be s/s or monel). then u have a 110,000, 630 travelling at approx 25-30kts.... correct me if im wrong, but it would of made a meal of the reflector alone. wouldnt the 630 get this damage from hitting something with a larger surface area....?

OTP, good to see you've joined the speculation

far

From what little I can see, I can draw the following conclusion, the section of the hull below the cored area of the hull side (around 6 inches above the water line) is intact therefore leading me to believe that the delamination that is seen here is the result of the laminates not adhearing to the core. The problem isn't so much the installation of the core as it is the core itself. The company that supplied bertram with the core is suspect. For reasons I can't understand (or perhaps I do and don't want to admit it), bertram used a substandard core material that isn't even ISO certified. This coupled with the fact that an air conditioning contractor was doing the lamination for bertram is what caused the mess that we see here.