Bertram 630 Sportfish Sinks?

yup, a picture is worth a thousand words and those pictures say volumes....
There were only two people on that boat when the "incident" happened. You may never get "all the facts" but I understand NYCAPS point. However....
We are on a very busy lake with lots of 35/55ft pleasureboats that run aground and into each other (frequently). We fix those boats in my boat yard. I have seen boats with holes in them you can walk through but I have never seen a boat where so much of it appears to be almost completely delaminated, even at the opposite end from the impact. We have a Catamaran here that went end over end at almost 200mph and it didn't come apart like that. 25knots and a buoy? Really?
These questions should be asked. And if as SHAZAM suggested the core material is gassing and causing de-lamination how many other boat builders also used this product?
I agree that we don't have all the facts but the faulty core/de-lamination theory is the only one that resonates with those pictures. (so far) to me...

Ctdave, I too in a previous life was in the offshore scene. I owned and built several offshore deep v's raceboats in a past life. The boat that you are referring to in the first few seconds of the video was a 32' Manta named "the heat is on", although the boat was built out of the old 1970's Tommy Adams 32' Signature molds it was made with the latest and greatest resin from Ashland Chemicals (AME 5000 if I remember correctly) and it was one of the first FULLY CORED race boats of its era. The failure in question was due to defective resin from Ashland as well as the boat stuffing. Any decently built boat from that era should have survived getting stuffed like that without harm. When everyone started to go after lighter weights is when we started having failures like these. Do you remember the super light, super fast Franks Marine 33 Powerplay and how it disintegrated into nothing back in the mid 90's?

Really.......How many Hrs have you spent running a...or better yet running next to a Bertram 630 to come up with this......

is this 1/3?

This is why you are defending it with nothing but twists, word-plays, false aquisations you cannot stand up to when called, and other fishy stuff. By the way, you went for the recond aloud about being "outta this carnage thread" a wee bit ago, do you?
It is already a subtheme of the topic in tiself about how many times people pointed out inconsistences in your posts. Stop disrupting the discussion by repeating the same dull BS over and over ad nauseam, it aint even funny.

Sure Sherlock. Some also like to burn things down, kill whales, and floot threads with their misguided self-righteousness. But some are simply enjoying a meaningful discussion with knowlegeable people, and feel extremely irritated with people acting stupid trolls just because they know (talk about presenting speculation as a fact!) what a dark creatures with vile intentions we are for doing it. Honestly, you promised to get out of the thread, keep it.

This looks interesting to me. So hitting a wave top speed plus a problem with the hull build can result in a damage consistent with what we see on pictures of this Bert?

Not the case here at all. I've actually held off posting the worst pictures in hopes that somehow bertram will step up to the plate and make things right. I haven't really caught up with what was going on with whats going on in this thread because I've been busy, but I did spend the entire weekend thinking about this story.

Here's my problem and keep in mind, I'm not here to plug myself or whatever boat it is that I own. This weekend I had to move my personal 65' Sportfisherman (brand intentionally omitted) from the islands to miami, me, my mechanic and a friend who had made the trip several times untied friday evening and were hoping to get home before the cold front hit south florida. As luck would have it, we got caught in the cold front and spent around 12 hours running in 14'+ (and I mean +++) seas, temp somewhere in the low 30's and what must have been somewhere in the 20's with wind chill. Wind howling at what seemed to be 50 mph+ and rain that was sideways the whole trip. Visibility no further than the bow of the boat. By the time we got caught in this mess it was already too late to turn around, so we had to keep going. Here's a sampling of what we were going through, mind you I was able to take this video because things had calmed down enough where I was able to actually pull the phone out and record what was going on...


Forget the brand of the boat as I'm not here to plug another boat company but lets take a look at the damage the boat sustained after our ordeal was over:

1- STBD outrigger snapped in half.
2- VHF antennas snapped in half or gone all together.
3- Davit cable snapped causing davit to swing from side to side and slamming into house.
4- Radar scanner ripped off of hard top.
5- Transom door latch ripped off.
6- Port side aft spray rail ripped off of hull.
7- every door and drawer inside boat broke their locks and spewed out whatever was behind them.

etc, etc.

The ride was so bad that I had to tie myself to the helm chair while my crew laid down in the ER bilge so they wouldn't get thrown around (both were injured) and so that they could keep warm. This was quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever done, in retrospect I can't figure out why I put my friends and myself in harms way like this. I know there are those of you out there who have been out in worse weather, but for me this is the worst I had ever seen and the longest I had ever been exposed to this kind of beating. I doubted many things during this trip, I doubted whether or not the tower would stay together (we had several instances where waves washed over the tower), I doubted whether the generators would keep running, I prayed that the motors would keep running and that the fuel didn't have any water in it, etc. With all that was going through my mind, the one thing that I didn't even think about was whether or not the boat was going to stay together in one piece. Why? Because the company that built this boat was famous for building BRICK FCUKING $HITHOUSES! Sure the boat may not have the nicest woodwork, the nicest lines or the fastest speeds, but where it matters (construction) I knew the boat was overbuilt and that's what gave me the confidence to keep pushing forward.


What does this have to do with Bertram or the 630? What if I was a ferretti bertram owner that doesn't keep tabs on whats going on with the company or who hasn't heard the dock talk about the recent 630 issues and had owned other Bertrams (like I have) and only thought of his boat as the offshore battlewagon that was built like the afore mentioned BRICK $HITHOUSE? Based on my experiences with my older Bertrams (60', 54', etc) why would I think twice about taking my boat out in this weather? Now imagine if unbeknownst to said owner that his boat was the "Certifiable" or "Absolute"? How would that trip offshore have ended? If a plastic buoy ended "absolute's" life, what would 12+ hours of the pounding I took have done? It's for this reason that I find Ferretti/Bertram's behavior UNCONSCIONABLE! As soon as there was any doubt regarding the lamination, core or ANYTHING THAT COULD ENDANGER PEOPLES LIVES the factory should have notified the owners of all recently manufactured bertrams and told them what was going on and asked them not to use the boats until the factory had independent surveyors thoruogly check ALL THE BOATS! I know others may have stated this already, I think its worth repeating.

Everyone makes mistakes, everyone builds a dud once in a while but its how you handle your mistakes that determines who you are as a company. I for one find the way that Ferretti/Bertram has handled this situation totally unacceptable.

That's why my big boat is Aluminum....20 ft seas in the Windward Passage off Jamaica with water in the fuel was enought o convince me of what material to use..my deckhands words before he went below,,"man, we gonna die tonite"

Needless to say, we didn't die that nite, the next experience was off Cape Medicino, anyone who has been there know about that graveyard...

Just my 2c....no dis respect to plastic boats...I do have a Hatteras as well...

I don't know what you are driving, but that's Donzi weather....

I ran a 57' and if you go on Bertram's website and look at the pictures you can see for yourself. Ok, 25% of the hull is out of the water.......

http://media.channelblade.com/boat_...e/company27590/143707_p_t_640x480_image07.jpg

Friday was bad, this was Saturday!

Yeah, wasn't Pepe (forgot his last name) killed in that accident? I remember it was a Power Play but can't remember the name. I raced one of the last open cockpit boats in our class. It was a 37' Outerlimits called Baang Cafe "Wild Child". We dominated in 2000 and 2001. Before and after that, I was a stand in driver for several different teams. Another 37 Outerlimits blew the bow apart after a stuff but it turned out that the crew chief spent hours with a hole saw in an attempt to lighten the boat. The stringers and bulkheads didn't like that.

SHAZAM!!!!!!!!
Holy crappola That is some nasty & frightening weather. I know how it is when its so bad that you can't record it & when you finally can & look back at it, it doesn't seem so bad.
THAT is some serious underware destroying weather. Glad your home safe!

Can anyone else see it????? I can clear as day. Either I'm looking at a different picture or there is a weird smudge on my screen (dam questionable web sites) LOL
It's running paralell, below the length of the prop shaft in the picture.

OK OK, I'll look again....................... Nope, I still just see fish and sand.

Someone is not telling the whole story about what happened. Call me crazy.... Buy the looks of all the pictures I would have to say maybe an on board explosion of some kind.

i've checked the docket and there was a complaint filed, followed by an order agreed to by all parties that the vessel would not be disturbed, and then followed by an amended complaint on december 23. i've not compared the complaint to the amended complaint to determine what was added to the amended complaint. the amended complaint has various counts against both defendants for breach of express and implied warranties, breach of the magnuson moss act, breach of maritime contract etc. ordinary causes of action when a product disintegrates.

marine max and bertram are the defendants and they have not yet responded to the amended complaint. it seems today would be the deadline for doing so, unless the parties have agreed to an extension of time to respond.