They say Bertram is
still in business after having been acquired by an Italian outfit
that seems to have done less than a spectacular job in letting
anyone know that Bertram Yacht is still with us. In fact, every
time I drive by the plant and glance at the parking lot, I notice
its nearly empty, the place is overgrown with weeds, with not
much activity going on. Then I go to the Bertram web site and
there's almost nothing there. Hello, anyone home?
One thing I do
know is that some of the old crew are still hanging around.
Bertram went under in 1990 with the recession, but in 93 I was
hired by a Japanese Corporation who'd cut a deal with Diaship
to begin production on a new line of 46' sport fishermen that
were going to be marketed under the Diaship name which, as far
as I know, is a Dutch outfit. What the Japanese and Dutch had
to do with it, I never quite found out, but the Japs ended up
with all six of first and only Diaship 46's produced out of
the Bertram plant. My only point with all this is that with
a skeleton crew, six superb new boats were turned out. I Q.C'd
all six of them and they didn't miss a beat.
Despite what looks
to be a closed down operation, a few Bertrams are still rolling
out, or so they say, but they are now only offering 54
and 60 convertibles. No more small boats. The problem, I think,
is that the demand for "affordable" boats has driven
the quality builders right out of the small boat market. The
problem is that people want their boats to be like luxury hotel
rooms complete with all the amenities, and there's just no way
a builder can give them that, and good quality too. At $1,000/ft
for a 36 footer, there's just no way to sell enough to keep
a production line going. The only way you can get good quality
at a lower price is to cut back on all that fanciness. Instead,
people are willing to accept cheap luxury at a still outrageous
price. What we got here is good quality at a price that will
button your pocket flaps down.
This is the first
one of its kind that I have seen, no doubt because there aren't
many of them, and it may well be the last. There is also supposed
to be a new 30' Moppie, but I've never seen one. Yet walking down
the dock, this is an eye catcher, not only because it retains
those design and style features that shout "Bertram,"
but also because we haven't seen a style like this before.
Sounds like a contradiction, I know, but I had it pegged as a
Bertram long before I saw the name on the side. Closest we've
seen is the old 38 Special, which is a much larger boat, despite
the 2 foot difference.
The next question
to pop in my mind was "how big is this thing?" I thought
it looked like a 30 footer. Viewed from astern, it looks a lot smaller
than 36 feet, but in profile she almost looks her size. Almost.
A lot of that has to do with the 13" beam and the rather high
aspect for a 36 foot boat. Then you notice that there is an awful
lot crammed into that space. Looking at the forward portion of the
cockpit deck, which raised up quite high, you also know that this
was done to get some rather large diesels in their, the high profile,
long stroke, in-line Cat 3116's to be exact. No short stroke, 90
lb. weaklings here, folks. Big tall chunks of cast iron that need
a lot of space. Take a gander at the photos and you'll see how they
got the space that was needed. With 600 hp in a 36' open hull, I
needn't tell you that speed is not a problem here.
The first word to
pop into my mind was "nifty." I like it. Whoever designed
it managed to get all that stuff in there without making it look
like a pile of rubble. You can see right off that while there's
not a whole lot of room in the cockpit, the traffic pattern is good
enough to allow you to move around freely, although to be sure,
four people back there are going to be bumping into each other,
at least there's nothing to trip or fall over.
As a trained designer,
I know how difficult it is to pull off a design like this. Most
small boats with such a high profile usually end up looking a scaled
down motel room designed to resemble a boat, what I call the floating
campers. You know the kind with the ballooned out decks that look
like a bomb set off inside a steel fuel tank. Bloated. Well, there
is something of a bloated look to it in profile, yet it still manages
to look stylistically good. The semblance of harmonious, graceful
lines are there. This is conventional style carried to the limits
of good taste. Yet it is unmistakably Bertram.
In fact, that raised
deck seems so high its almost like a flybridge. While at first I
didn't like that big step up, one quickly comes to appreciate the
altitude after getting underway. Yes, sooner or later someone is
going to inadvertently take an unfortunate step backwards and end
up in a heap in the cockpit, particularly with the lack of hand
holds between the bait and tackle centers. There ought to be a couple
of sturdy stainless grab rails here. One thing that needs some help
here is that 18" wheel which should be 24". It really
felt puny in my hands. Then, see those steps molded into the sides
of the cockpit? I tripped over them at least three times because
you don't expect them to be there. You have a foot cove all around
except for there, and as you're moving around, those boxes get you
every time. Bad idea.
What I really wanted
to know was how she was built. I recently did a late model 35 Tiara
Tournament fisherman with which I was appalled at how little glass
there was in the hull sides and decks. When I hit the hull sides
with my fist, the whole thing would shudder and rattle. At the cut
outs for the vents, I could measure the glass thickness at a measly
3/16" thick. Geez, that's what you get for a quarter mil? I
mean, is glass and resin that expensive that that's the best they
can do? Well, no, it isn't, but there you have it. Bean counters.
The decks sounded
thin an tinny, sort of like a drum skin stretched too tight. Wow.
I thought, a quarter million bucks and the thing sounds like a rattle
trap. For that kind of money they can't even stiffen up the hull
sides and put some glass in the decks? Well, I didn't find any of
that on the 36 Moppie. I pounded, hammered and even jumped on the
decks with no impression of weakness at all. When I jumped on the
deck of the Tiara, the overhead cabinet attached to the underside
of the deck in the galley area split open! Yes, the decks give that
much.
Wow, what a difference,
although there's not much difference in price, adjusted for size.
Here were two boats, the Bertram weighed in at 20,500 lbs. and the
Tiara at 16,000 lbs. Not hard to see where some of the weight difference
is. The Bertram was just all-over solid, from the very wide cockpit
gunwales to the trunk cabin top which doesn't give when you stomp
on it.
A lot of builders
are now turning to the vacuum bagging process in an effort to make
molded parts as strong as possible. So they say. What they don't
say is that it is also an effort to use as little material as possible,
squeezing out every last drop of resin possible so that they use
less. While the parts may be strong and light, this is also having
the effect of creating parts that are thin and thin sounding. The
parts are too thin and many of these boats are becoming rattletraps,
with acoustics that are just terrible. Honest to God, riding along
at high speed in that Tiarra, in barely more than a one foot chop,
I went down into the cabin. With the cabin sole and nearly everything
else on the interior attached to the bottom of the hull, that boat
sounded like it was breaking apart. It wasn't, but the snap, crackle
and pop noises it made was downright unnerving. And a lot of that
energy was being transmitted right up through all those thin hull
structures into the decks you are standing on. You could feel every
wave in your feet. The noise was truly awful because these high
density, thin laminates ARE just like drum skins stretched too tight.
Well, none of that
on our Bertram. The acoustics were just what I'd expect with a well
built, conventionally laminated hull and deck. In the cabin, the
hull noise level was probably less than half that of the Tiara.
No Tin Lizzie rattletrap, this boat. The cabin sole wasn't
attached to the bottom of the hull either.
Yes, there are some
things to complain about. Like the aluminum bow railings. One of
my recent customers was the owner of a foundry. A stainless steel
casting foundry, to be exact. In case you're not aware of this,
the cost of stainless is going through the roof recently because
of a scarcity of nickel. Hence aluminum railings. But its also got
aluminum rub rails, cheap, crappy little things which, on this boat
is just inexcusable. The very same that Chris Craft used on their
Catalina series boats years ago. Junk. Terrible. Awful. Piss you
off no end what will happen to them when they rub against a piling.
The engine compartment?
Well, as you'd expect there isn't enough room. But at least there
is a decent space between the engines, which is greatly reduced
by the 8 kw Kohler generator. While you can get down there okay,
all you can reach is that which is touching your elbows. Front,
back and outboard sides are unreachable. And of course those heavy
seating modules mean that owners aren't going to pull the hatches
to inspect what needs to be inspected, and repair what needs repairing
before things get out of hand. Just isn't going to happen. As these
boats grow older, the engine compartments aren't going to age gracefully.
Whatever changes the
new ownership has made, they're not showing up much in this boat.
If I didn't know the history of the company, I wouldn't suspect
that anything had happened. I guess that a lot of that is due to
whatever former employees have been retained. They had people down
there been with them 30 years, and getting them to change their
ways would probably be like trying to walk a cat. When I look at
the detail work, I don't see much of anything different.
Its all typically
Bertram. At 20,500 lbs this is a heavy boat. Frankly, I've had my
fill of light boats and I detest the way they perform in a sea way.
And just as importantly, I don't like tinny sounding boats. You
know, there's no way they could build and sell a luxury automobile
that didn't sound as solid as a rock. Rolls Royce, Mercedes, even
Cadillac, go out of their way to make their cars sound solid, whether
they are or not.. And people buy them because of that, even if they
do have plastic bumpers. Let those cars start sounding thin and
cheap and tinny and the show's over. Whether we realize it or not,
top quality has a certain sound to it.
I ended up being seduced
by this boat because it looked, felt and handled like a top quality
boat. All the aesthetic values are there, adding up to a boat that
is a real delight to operate. It just feels good. What else can
I say?
With only two years
of production, its just too bad there won't be more of them around.
While I do wish I could give this one a best buy rating, its far
too pricey for that. The only other one on the market is asking
$339,000, and one suspects it isn't going to sell anytime soon.
| These
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We do not publish the results of the surveys that we perform.
Please note that the purpose of these reviews is educational,
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Posted July 29, 1998
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