Catastrophic delamination on a new Bertram 63'...

Explaining it to potential customers is easy: A) The company jumped on it, got him into a new boat right away and sent him to Cabo for a week as an appology or B) stammer-stammer-stutter-stutter-uh-uh, weeeell.

I agree, all companies in the marine business have a serious issue like this from time to time. It is not a perfect world and anything can happen such as this. The major thing is HOW THEY HANDLE THE SITUATION, that is the deciding factor and how well they take care of the owner tells how the company is. If an owner in a situation like this gets lawyers involved, it is not going to be pretty for the company. The company should have offered the owner a brand new boat, right off the bat and destroyed this one as I can see no way that anyone knowing what happened to it, would ever buy it after it's been fixed.

You forgot C): Brand V Yachts sees an opportunity and lends the guy a boat to fish a tournament and, if the spies are correct, have convinced him to buy a Brand V SF.

And, to the poster who claimed that the interiors of the 54 came from Italy, the 70 EB that I reviewed last spring (and one might assume that certain economies of scale could be had by building the rest of the line accordingly) had it's interior constructed by Richardson's out of Ohio.

Lamo 101

My guess as to the cause would be contaminate on the gel surface prior to skinning the hull. Glass shops are dirty, even the best ones. If the gel cured before they glassed the skin on, then you can garuntee glass and wood dust settled on the chine and strakes, after that it took just one air buble not rolled out in the skin coat and water pressure did the rest. After having built boats for Brunswick for nearly 25 years. Ive seen the same thing a few times. Occasionally a builder gels the hull on friday and skins it on monday to help meet schedules. eventually it will bite em in the backside.
Pardon the speeling errors.

Welcome to the Forum Drew. The speelchuck w/ the ABC & CK in the upper right will handle the speeling for you.

The Reel Story - My Bertram

I have read and heard a lot of commentary and speculation about my Bertram 63 –“Certifiable”. While this certainly was a very unfortunate event, at no time was my safety or my crews’ safety at risk. I could not have been any more pleased with the professional manner and speed that Bertram addressed the matter. They stepped up immediately and resolved the matter to my complete satisfaction. I have owned several Bertram’s over the years and I will continue to remain a member of the Bertram family of proud owners. I know that Bertram is not the first boat manufacturer to experience such an occurrence nor will they be the last. However, in my eyes the most important factor is how the matter is addressed with the customer. My faith and trust in Bertram continues and has been further reinforced as a result of this.


Big Syd

Hi Syd and welcome to YF,

Your post has been merged with the existing thread. We are all glad to hear that Bertram stepped up and has addressed the situation to your satisfaction. No doubt, this was an important matter in the court of consumer confidence.

Welcome to YF Syd, glad to hear you were taken care of in an expeditious manner.

Kudos to Big Syd.

Instead of silence, or a grudging acknowlegement of a fix, he has penned an awfully nice response on how well Bertram Yacht has addressed the matter. Not only was he apparently made whole, as Legalman sometimes calls it, but he was treated as we all would like to be.

Being a proud owner of previous Bertrams and counting himself as a continuing proud member of the Bertram family is a fairly strong endorsement of any builder by an experienced yachtsman.

Take a bow, Big Syd.
Good for you, Bertram Yacht.

The largish readership of Yacht Forums should certainly help to preclude any (all too-common) uninformed BS typically heard on the docks. As this is actually good news, it may not even be newsworthy.

Boats break. Stuff happens. A quick fix and a happy owner should tell you a lot about serious boatbuilders who plan on being around for a long, long time.

That is just SO good to hear. Hats off to Bertram that in these hard times they stepped up to the plate and did exactly the right thing. Welcome to the Forum Big Syd and hats off to you for promptly reporting this. Too often people are fast with complaints, but slow with their compliments. May you and Bertram have many years of safe & fun cruising together.

Bad Practice or Lazy Lay-up?

This afternoon we hauled a 6 month old 49 footer, all very new and bright.

One of the boys was power washing it and clumps of gelcoat started to fall off the keel, chines and water line. Some were about 4 to 6 inch strips others like big pinholes (nailholes?).

This from a yard I've worked for and has a reputation for tough workboat hulls. I hope I'm not blowing my own trumpet when I say 15 years ago, we never let one duff molding leave the yard.

Are standards slipping? Are corners being cut or is the mighty dollar ruleing what is being passed out of the yard gate?

Shoot the Accountants and sack cheap foreign labour. They don't CARE.

Fish

For the records, I guess this was not a Bertram?

Nope, its European I'm afraid to say.

Having visited a number of factories (and I have an Italian boat under build), one observation I have of the build process of most of the Italian yards is the brands are no more than marketing and design. All aspects of the boat's construction are outsourced: hull, systems, cabinetry, etc are all done by third parties. The factory just provides logistics, a roof for the assembly and "quality control" people.

The results can range from perfectly good to poor, depending on how well managed the construction process is. Unfortunately, I don't think most of the factories are well managed. Instead of product that is in its entirety created for its purpose, you end up with a collection of systems. Systems installed by "craftsman" who probably have never boated. Sometimes you end up with disasters like the delamination.

I've always wondered why the european boats sometimes have really bizarre aspects to them. One thesis I heard from a builder is that nearly all of the non-american customers only hire crews (even for very small boats -- a mexican owner has a captain for his 30') and let the crew deal with the problems. Class distinction is very much alive and well. Owners rarely dine aboard and generally are marina-to-marina. The owners there don't have the same degree of "owner-operator" mindset that many American owners have (even if the boat is crewed). No flames, please from non-American readers, just repeating what a european builder said.

The takeaway I had was as an "owner-operator" you must have a surveyor inspect several times during the construction process... and then hound them to fix everything. My experience has been positive in that the factory complied with everything. In the end (almost there) I will be ending up with hopefully a well sorted out boat.

Can't imagine how annoying and troublesome the boat would have been a year after operation, if I hadn't identified the defects. It's a bunch of little things like the drain line on an a/c collector pan connected at the forward end of the pan (right answer is the aft end).

The sad truth is I don't believe my list of defects makes it back to change the process for the subsequent boat.

It sounds funny that someone would hire crew for even a 30 footer, but I have to applaud them for understanding what they don't know and how much trouble they can get into. I have several clients of small boats who wouldn't leave the dock without a captain aboard. Boats are complicated and a lot can happen out there. I once read an article about a trip from Lindenhurst, NY to Block Island (a trip I can do in my sleep). The guy made it sound like the voyages of Columbus and it was a calm sunny day. It was his 2nd time doing the trip and he felt lost because the balloons (that people release on the beach at weddings and land about 1.5 miles offshore) weren't there. He thought they were nav-aids. We've spent a lifetime learning what we know. It's our passion and profession. Most people go out a few days a year. Having peace of mind makes boating a whole lot more fun.
In these days of mass production a yard can't afford to have electricians and other trades hanging around between boats so they farm it out and, as they say, the cheap becomes expensive. I know of one manufacturer whose electrical systems are notorious for trouble and to work on them is a nightmare because every one is different for exactly the reason you site Goplay. If you're not buying off the showroom floor you'd be crazy not to have someone supervising the build. This is one of the reasons I recommend that my clients buy pre-owned. The first owner has already gone through the de-bugging process which can easily take 2 or 3 years of wondering what won't work this time.

Hi,

Ain't that the truth.

Amnesia rules when it comes to builders carrying over problem solvers to subsequent builds.

Ohh yeah, I agree totally. Captain's are very cheap to have full time in a lot of parts of the world. In Central and South America, you never see an owner/operator. Owners can have a full time Captain for a few hundred dollars US a week in those countries. In Europe it is also very very common to have full time crew on a smaller yacht. Heck, once upon a time I was a full time Captain on a 45' Cabo express AND had a full time mate down in Central America. Thats what the owner wanted.

As far as I know, with Azimut for example. Azimut does the hull and fiberglass superstructure and they sub-out all of the electrical and interior work (maybe more). I have taken care of two 68' plus' the same year. Everything is different, none of the wiring matches the diagrahms. Even the electrical components aren't the same from boat to boat. They don't use stainless screws on the interior joinery, they use some kind of plated Home Depot drywall screws on much of it. The joinery work isn't even the same. They use different subs for each boat, because Electrician A is working on hull #3, Electrician B is working on Hull #4, etc. etc. etc. A large Azimut dealer told me even they have electrical issues on the new boats, they don't even bother tracing the wires, the simply just pull new wires. All in all on the European boats, Azimut does seem to be the most solid with the least amount of overall problems.

Hi,

Maybe this is the case with the plastic fantastic point and squirt boats you work with but I have no doubt there would be a number of Dutch, German and other European Yacht builders who would strenuously argue with that broad ranging statement.

Even here where a captain is fairly expensive, if you day hire you have the peace of mind while out and you get your boat checked thoroughly that day. If you use the same captain regularly he learns to norm for your boat and keeps you advised. I recently heard from a client when he got a work order from the yard. I was able to let him know where the bill is padded and how the handle it so the yard thinks he's on top of things.

Except for:

The mfg. SHOULD have solid supervision when subbing to avoid this, but...well, there's another buck that can be saved. Again, the wise buyer has his own rep doing Q.C. It's money well spent.