Bertram 630 Sportfish Sinks?

trisdee80, u can see the delaminating in the pics, up front where the core is peeling away from the outer layer (looks very similar to 'Certifiable')... bulkheads doing the same thing... just peeling away, no fractures... ill do a simple test sheet if u want?

SHAZAM!... I wouldn’t mind seeing those pics..... i think. it will hurt bertram by the sound of it.

also, would it be the right thing to do for Ferretti to sell Bertram off...? i mean there driving the name into the ground with, what seems to be, poor choices in material/application...? or at least slow the production down and get there #### sorted...

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I'm not a lover of the newer Bertrams, but if you reference the pics, you should show them. You should also accept the invitation to promote your product. It may help us understand why your posts have been so critical of Betram. If you're a boat builder and attack another you have an ethical obligation to expose any potential bias. That way your post can be given the proper weight. Otherwise it sounds like you're just trying to hurt the competition with rumor.

i believe this thread addresses something much more than a ''rumor''...

Actually not. That's why I think this thread should be split between a) this accident and b) delamination and structural failure issues with all manufacturers. In catagory (b) I'd be especially interested to see those pics and to be able to gauge the bias of another builder making such statements about a competitor. Let the chips fall where they may with full disclosure.

I've only made it to the post i'm quoting below, so forgive me if I'm missing something so far. Don't post here much as my boat doesn't quite qualify as a "yacht", but boat crash threads always intrigue me.

NO WAY that bouy was the root cause of this sinking. Did the boat hit the bouy? Maybe, who knows. Certainly plausible. But if so - the bouy was the straw that broke the camels back. And the point about the utter lack of damage to the bouy has been made.

As for "F=MA" - none of y'all have gotten it right as far as i've read. The mass of the bouy is about 250 lbs. Like a person. The bouyancy is a contributor to the "F" - it is a bouyant force. It does not affect mass, and only affect acceleration in relation to it's contribution to total force. The bouyant force is in the vertical direction - perpendicular to the direction the boat was traveling. It is not a significant factor in the collision. At rest, the bouyant force counteracts the weight (mass times gravitational acceleration) of the bouy. If, in fact, the boat came down on the bouy completely vertically, which is the case where the bouyancy would have the greatest impact, the contribution of the bouyancy to the force of the impact would be minimal in relation to the force imparted by the collision. Just for a moment, imagine if this boat was suspended directly over the bouy, bouy aligned at the optimum angle for hull penetration and placed on pavement (ie - it don't go down, and the "bouyant" force replaced by much greater resistance to motion from the pavement). Imagine the boat falling on this bouy. Does it add up to this damage? No way in a frozen hell - unless the construction of the boat is suspect. Which it is.

Look at the one picture where the bulkhead is pulled away from the hull. This is the most telling in my opinion, and I have not heard anyone mention this. The fiberglass tabbing is pulled cleanly away from the hull, with no breakage of the hull or the tabbing in this area. There is no marring of the hull side - as if the tabbing was never there, except for a slight discoloration absent in the area previously covered by the tabbing. I'm no composites expert, just a lowly mechanical engineer with a boating fetish - but it seems to me to be plain as day that in that particular area, there was no adhesion between the tabbing and the hull.

Well built in the context of how a 63' Sportfisher should be built? No. Of course not, it doesn't need to be and such construction would be contrary to the intent of the boat.

Well built for a production go-fast? Yes, definitely. Just a quick look at the picture you're referencing should be an indication of how well built the boat is - it was cruising at least at the top speed of this bertram when it hit that pole, and it still didn't suffer delamination. I'm going to go out on a pretty **** sturdy limb by saying that just about any Fountain you find, even with a rotten stringer or two, is a better hull than this particular sportfish. But that's like saying a wooden board is built better than a toothpick - you don't have to be an expert to see major problems in the construction of this particular Bertram. It should have been able to hit a wall of these bouys and keep on cruising.

Regarding cored hulls - Fountains are cored all the way through. They're a good boat for what they are - and this is a good application for a cored hull. Note that most Fountain owners (myself included) store their boats out of the water, either on a trailer, on a hoist, or on a rack. I do this at least in part to minimize the risk of water intrustion into the core - if there's no water in the bilge and no bilge in the water, the core and stringers stay dry. On a cruiser, sportfish, anything that i'm going to put bottom paint on and leave in the water, i'm staying away from cores below the water line, no matter how well built.

I recall an incident on a much smaller scale in my neck of the woods, where a much smaller boat hit a much sturdier bouy one night, most likely going faster than this Bertram was. The boat went down, went down fast. Big gash in the side. But the deck was still attached to the hull. And most of the hull was still there.

These are some amazing pictures! As if this thread isn't long enough already, I'm sure it will double as these pics are analyzed. Or is there really a lot of analysis to do?

Certainly this incident will have to be considered in its own right and in context of other incidents mentioned, especially on related models.

As the damage was so high on the hull, I'd be really interested to hear more from the crewmembers about sea conditions - were they really running into waves, and what were conditions the previous couple of days on the trip.

Since the damage does not appear to be from a bouy strike, could the deck have been separating from the hull, maybe for some time?

Curious too about earlier usage. As noted, few boats like this come out of Lindenhurst. But, was this boat fishing Montauk all summer?

IF the boat came down onto the end of the pole the pole could easily pierce the hull at that point. and IF it met a backing plate....I'd still expect either the buoy to be pushed down or the backing plate to be blown out before the deck pealed back. But IF after being pierced the bow then got pulled down into a wave by the exiting buoy the incoming water could peal the deck. That would be being at the wrong place at the wrong moment and the gods being ticked off at you. All speculation, but possible. I await the results of the arbitration. I expect some sort of compromise that won't please anybody; especially the captain.

Not entirely untrue, but not entirely true either.

A cored hull will be stiffer in bending than a solid hull for the same reason that a tube of given diameter with adequate wall thickness is stiffer in bending than a rod of the same diameter and material.

If you can visualize this in your head, including the reaction to the bending stresses by individual components of the structure, you can understand. It's difficult to understand, more difficult to explain - but if you take a given piece of a solid fiberglass laminate, and compare it to a piece with nearly identical layup except a small portion in the middle is replaced by a core, the cored laminate will be stiffer. Not necessarily stronger - that's a more general term that will depend on many factors - but stiffer. More susceptible to water intrusion, and likely impact as well, but stiffer nonetheless.

Stiffer but without any shear strength.

Ford is still living down its Pinto gas tanks in the mind of the consumer, and all to save $20 Million back then. A poorly handled response to the possibility of safety defects, or worse a lack of response to mounting circumstantial evidence, will be far more dam*ing and damaging to Ferretti/Bertram in the mind of the consumer and the current owners. Taking the appearance of indifference as an approach to "handling" the issue is doubly dam*ing in an age of rapid and free flow of information (and speculation). This is not a bash against Bertram, as it is a truthful statement for all manufacturers in all industries today.

Crying about it on the internet is not going to stop the speculation, nor the subsequent drop in value of this era of boat from this builder due to decreased demand. Only when Bertram steps up with honest answers and honest response will the questions be answered whether owners or prospective owners have anything to fear. Crying about it on the internet makes it look like you're trying to bail yourself out of a bad mistake.

I must have missed Bertram's "crying". IMHO it looks like they've stated their opinion on how this accident happened and handled any structural problems on a case by case basis. It wouldn't serve them well to get into a p...ing match with anonymous people bashing them with speculation. Have any other builders had any structural problems? From the sounds of this thread one would assume not.

Who said Bertram was crying? I noted their deafening silence. Trisdee80 is the one crying on the internet.

Also, who said Bertram should get involved in a peeing contest with anyone? Being a public relations professional, my opinion is that their flagrant mishandling of (now known to be multiple) boat issues that have become public knowledge is a gross error on their part.

As an automotive example, Toyota has an outstanding reputation among consumers because they have an outstanding PR machine. They have had a tremendous number of safety-related recalls in the last few years, but their reputation persists because when there is a whiff of product claims, they immediately reach out to owners and offer to check their vehicles. When they identified rusting frame issues with a supplier, they footed the bill to buy back trucks or replace defective frames. The domestics have a reputation for ignoring and overlooking product failures, and that reputation translates to the consumer level through product avoidance (and corporate bankruptcy).

If Bertram was able to put out a press release acknowledging that they are looking into possible issues and doing their best to ensure that it is not, in fact, a product issue then they could quell a significant amount of the speculation. If they found that there may, in fact, be some process problem which can be / will be / is being addressed then making that information public can assuage the concerns of owners and prospective owners as well as captains. Without explicitly admitting product liability due to factors related to the nature of how boats are used, they could easily put out some CYA releases that don't allow as much room for bashing to occur. They could also put out a release stating that they have not, to date, identified anything in their process or product that would indicate being contributory to catastrophic failures like have been seen on more than one of their recent products.

But putting out fantasy-based speculative releases suggesting that a 3" diameter pipe on a 250# buoy ripped the sides, top, and rear of a 63' boat in relatively calm seas does nothing other than invite more speculation.

They've essentially stated that they are going out of their way to refuse to address issues even when brought to their attention, and going the extra mile to disclaim any need for them to do any self-examination. The lawyers might have warned them to do this, but the lawyers are going to warn them right out of business... not the people on a messageboard who want to know if the boat they're trusting their life on is worthy of that trust.

Sea Ray learned this lesson the hard way, too. It's certain that other builders ahve also had structural issues, and it's certain that other builders have lost sales or even gone out of business for similar reasons. But the companies that react the most forthrightly and earnestly in making sure their products live up to the claims are the ones who end up with great reputations and sales to match over the long haul.

I am sure that ALL fiberglass production builders have faced similar problems at some point in their history. From my personal experience I have heard and seen boats of all types and brands, European and American face some sort of structural or material failure. What remains in history however is the way the shipyard deals with the issue and addresses it with the owner.

It seems to me that they were unlucky to not have a good PR department at the time this found them.

for the record

Every production boat builder, likely any builder for that matter, has had an incident or two that they would like to forget and erase from the public mind. What that builder does with the facts they discover, or others discover for them, will either solidify, maybe even grow their market strength, or spin a dark vortex of self destruction.

We all apparently know what we see in the images, and seem to fully understand the consequences of denial. But in these horrific times for the entire boating industry, we can simply hope the right thing is done, and a founding member icon of the boating world is restored.

In all fairness, references to '08 hull #'s and retro have nothing to do with Ferretti, as that purchase was not consumated until the late fall of '08, well after the model year change. I do not know them other than their line of product, but it would only seem fair to give them a breath of judicial air if indeed the hulls we are discussing were before they took control.

And Shazam, I am, and others are, interested in who you are, and what you do ... a custom builder? Why not acknowledge yourself here, especially if you are willing to throw your composite knowledge weight around. Seems not stepping up front soon might jade your opinions to all of us.

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And how many times have we seen boat manufacturers put out press releases saying their boats a structurally unsound? I must have missed them. Auto manufacturers did it only because of Ralph Nader and because it's hard to ignore, or deal with on a case by case basis, problems that affect thousands of every-day people. The problem talked about here affects less than a handful of rich guys (actually only one that's been documented so far). However, the bashing and unsubstantiated rumoring that has gone on here will cost investors, plant workers and anybody trying to sell a used Bertram. Doesn't quite seem fair, but I guess some just find it fun tarnishing reputations or maybe some are just trying to drive more American marine manufacturing businesses out. Like I've said before, let's put this in a seperate thread and go after all manufacturers with pictures and facts.

Sometimes this discussion seems so convoluted I'm starting to loose track of it. If I'm still having some of it right, the question is where to put the blame for heated discussion of delaminated hull: at manufacturers of the hull or at participants of the discussion?

Because I think it's pretty obvious thing down deep. Surely those who talk are to blame. There are little to none honest people who are legitimately scared of ships falling apart on them in high seas among these rabble-rousers, no doubt here: all of'em are agents of evil forces diligently working on tarnishing reputations and driving companies out of business.

The only problem is, unfortunatelly, in this era of speed-of-light information dissemination via optical cables, it's really hard to stop it, so there is little practical point in applying such blame.

Still more sensible thing then imagining that the manufacturer could be somehow responsible for its public image. Now that would be absurd, and anyone thinking like it is, at best, lunatic, and at worst himself one of abovementioned agents of evil forces diligently working on tarnishing reputations and driving... well you got the point.

Viking came out with one great PR story on this new Vik hitting a whale and delaminating the hull. Written by the Capt. it went away in record time. That was one whale of a PR story.

Actually, the subject question is whether the captain sank the boat or the boat sank itself, and we're still waiting word from the involved parties where the fault lies.....or actually, we're not.

Quote: The adage "A picture is worth a thousand words" refers to the idea that complex stories can be described with just a single still image, or that an image may be more influential than a substantial amount of text.