VIDEO - Sunk Bertram Discussion

I would be willing to bet that if the stern cleats are gone than someone is in posession of the transom. That person being the whomever attempted to tow the boat stern 1st after the coasties departed.
If the forward engineroom bulkhead was not compromised the boat would still be fairly watertight.Once it was taken in tow they did not get far as i would bet that the transom ripped off and it sunk. As far as saying the boat was in tow stern 1st and than started to fill and than sunk and as it went down the towline ripped the transom off than. EHH a possibility but as thin as that thing was and the kind of force that would need to be exerted on it in order to procced with a tow I would bet on the 1st scenario.

I was wondering if the transom would float once it was off the boat.
Much is being made of the distance between the current location of the boat and the reported sinking location. I am wondering if they found anything (like a transom or section of deck ;-) ) at the sinking location.
A "debris field" was reported but it was not mentioned what the debris consisted of.
The transom does make you wonder about a "second" incident....
Or if the bulkhead tabbing was gone at the stern as well and the sides of the hull flexed maybe that could have contributed to the transom breaking off at the corners. But what pulled or pushed on it? Inflow of water? Or attempted tow? That is the interesting part.....

This is the most likely scenario and I too believe the construction was shodding (bulkheads broken free cleanly) and thin fiberglass in the bow section.

The transom may have been the result of a salvager trying to salvage the vessel by stern towing it after the crew departed and before the boat was completely submerged and resting on the bottom. I would imagine there was enough buoyancy in the fuel/water tanks and vessel that it stayed semi-submerged for hours before finally resting on the bottom.

I saw several boats that had been floating/sunk upside down for a month off of st. martin...that were salvaged and sitting at Fort Louis marina...and the front bow 1/4 of the boat was out of the water and clean, while the rest of the boat was covered in barnacles........

There is no bulkhead back by the transom simply an outer hull and an inner liner both paper thin cored sections.

Picture this .A line on each cleat is lead up thru the hawse pipe in the coaming which once the hole is cut for there is not much meat left there and than into a bridle to the towing vessel.Because the boat is most likly floating with the stern up bow down angle of 45 degrees or better much of the force is being transferred to the hawsepipe and the coaming. More or less trying to cut thru that area in order to make a straight line between the towboats cleat and the Bertrams cleat.Eventally the force of the line cuts thru the coaming and transom ,the transom folds in from the force of the water as the boat is towed astern and it fills.Now there is only 1 side of 3 left of the transom.and it has already been folded in once and this is a convex area that had to explode as this shape gave into the forces of the water.

Boat goes to the bottom and as it goes down the cleats are ripped from inner liner.Towboat ends up with a towline with 2 cleats on it.Transom waves in the current by the little bit of severed glass that holds it till it seperates and drifts off.

Anybody notice the handsaw that the one diver was carrying?
The thickness or the hull in several places is clearly an issue. You can bet there will be several samples of said hull presented in court as exhibit a, b, and c.

Is that what he was carrying? I couldn't tell.

Yes, you also hear him tapping the side of the hull with it.
Pick it up at about 12:40 and you'll get a clear picture of it.
This is along the area they are filming stress fractures along the hull.

Close but no cigar. The transom has hawse pipes on it......cleats are on the side of the inner hull right about where it broke off. Cleats either broke the transom off, or pull off of the inner liner and then would be stuck against the hawse pipes and too large to fit through them. Pulling the transom by the hawse pipes would be too much force and break the transom off just behind the bulkhead........

Bertram should have gave this guy a boat and some money to boot for his troubles and sent somebody out the next day with explosives.I would bet that you could grab a model from that same era and duplicate the damage in a day in similar wave conditions.This was not a one time flaw. This is a flawed misengineered layup schedule.If the foam was crap too, than that is just the icing on the cake.

What i would do right now if i owned one of these from this era is tear the inside apart and inspect the hull and deck cap bonding.If it looked good
i would take it out and run it like you stole into some following seas for a day Than have the forward hull section inspected and sounded the next day by some one who specializes in composite failures.

How long did it take the boat to sink?

So all the force of the line cleats is applied to the transom area and not the sides, Even better. Does anybody have a pic or diagram of the location of the stern cleats and hawsepipes?

Hawse pipes are on the transom near the very edges (port and starboard), but not on the sides if I remember correctly. Cleats are mounted to the port and starboard sides of the transom.......about 1' or so foward of the transom if I remember correctly.

You Potato I say Patato.

According to the Captain's testimony 10 minutes to submerge.......How long it stay submerged, or semi-submerged but NOT resting on the bottom is anyone's guess I believe.

The problem is if Bertram admits to hull failure, the owner is then going to sue for lost income (as he stated they were going to use it for charter business at his resort), as well as a lawsuit from both Captain and Mate for lost future wages and risk on their life and who knows who else would then sue........and down the line other owners would then start really investigating.....

Exactly as i envisioned it.Now are the cleats mounted to the sides of the cockpit directly under the hawsepipes or the transom. One way or another i don;t think it mattered the force was being transferred to the hawsepipes.That force wanted to eliminate what was between the towboat cleat and the Bertrams cleat. That would literally cut the transom area right where you see the break.

If the cleats simple ripped out and came to rest against the hawsepipes than just that area would have been destroyed and pulled out and the transom would have remained intact.

Mounted on the hull sides, just aft of where the bulkheads are shown in the picture, but the outside of the hull is clean, so they must be bolted between the outerhull and inner hull. I think the cleats didn't rip out, but ripped the whole transom off in one piece as we see here.

Yes but if Bertram had stood up to the plate immediatly and either payed this guy or he was stupid enough to except another one of their pieces of junk they could have covered this all up and had it under the rug in a couple of days, with some extra hush money to everybody to boot.

This incident will be the beginning of the end for Bertram.Both sides will lose a lot of money and most likely Bertram will be bankrupt before the owner will ever win his case.Now if Betrams liability insurance is in place things will turnout different.

One way or another unless Bertam is run by complete fools they knew they had a serious hull laminate problem out there and have done very little to handle it other than just keep rolling along and pretending everything is allright.

Doesn't matter, once it's submerged nobody is going to take it under tow without floating it.

There is always somebody dumb enough or greedy enough to do just about anything.........Maybe they were attempting to re-float it.