Monday, August 23, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Not our daddy’s Bertram
Things that go bump in the day
By Rick Eyerdam
A cargo container adrift at sea.
A couple years ago International Yachtsman Magazine hired me to test fish the newest Hatteras sport fishing yacht. This was big deal for them because the Hatterascal, as the showboat is called each year, employed a new construction technique in the never-ending effort to build lighter, faster sport fishermen. The solution may be to stop building hulls entirely out of hard, stiff, heavy, solid fiberglass and, instead build as much of the hull as you can safely get away with using foam cells or balsa coring in the hull sides.
In the old days, production boats including Hatteras and Bertram were laid up with literally tons of solid fiberglass. Originally the Hargrave Hatteras was a displacement hull, so it didn’t matter that much if the hull was too heavy to get up on a plane. But the Bertrams were always straked planning hulls built for speed, designed to embrace V8 gas engines that were strong enough to lift the hull, like wings in water, reducing the drag and increasing the potential for speed.
These early Bertrams established the reputation for sturdiness that was reinforced over many hurricane seasons even as the boats grew larger and diesels intervened. After the storm waves and raging winds most Bertrams were found strewn along crushed sea walls after having knocked over a row of pilings in the welter of a hurricane storm surge. The superstructure – the cabin which is made of lighter, laminated and cored material—might be cracked, but the hulls with their thick layers of fiberglass and resin and gelcoat usually faired better than the obstacles with which they collided.
The rich don’t mind
Truly rich men still don’t mind how fuel inefficient their sport fishing boat might be so long as it can run faster than 40 miles-an-hour and survive the kind of pounding a sport fishing yacht must endure running further than a hundred miles through rock hard wave fronts to reach the dock in time for the weigh-in with the winning Marlin. Steve Lewis, owner of Lewis Marine Supply put Viking on the map when he landed a winning blue marlin in a winner-take-all, million-dollar marlin tournament off New Jersey. Way too far away from the weigh-in dock with nasty sea conditions building, and a few hours before time expired, Lewis nevertheless ordered his captain to put the hammer down on his 47-foot Viking, Freebee, and drive it until the Viking either fell apart or made it to the dock. A million dollars later Viking had an answer to all those niggling Bertram and Hatteras owners who belittled the Vikings as somehow unworthy. Thank Neptune there wasn’t a blogosphere back then.
Back to the Hatterascal
My friend Dean Travis Clarke is a world renown story teller, editor and television personality and when he heard what had happened to the new Hatterascal the day the Power and Motoryacht Magazine crew was aboard he said it proved the virtue of her new design. Then he explained why. He recalled how this other sport yacht was traveling a couple years ago off the coast. It was laid up like almost all of the great sport yachts. She had dense layers of hand-laid fiberglass and resin fitted in a precise mold with her stringers boxed in and secured to sustain motor mounts for this new generation of high speed, high torque, wheel spinning diesel engines, the legacy of Detroit’s Roger Penske and, at Caterpillar, that elfin John Fabick. This boat was built to carry the mail at 40-plus and she would have done it had she not encountered a hawser line; the thick braided rope with which they secure huge ships to docks. With counter-rotating props, the hawser challenged all the physics and engineering of boat building by catching both spinning props and tying them together, working against each other. The result was all but inevitable. Something had to give. The counter-rotating 1000 hp torque of the engines ripped the running gear and its carriage from the sport yacht as the six-inch thick line apprehended the engines, exploding the running gear of the sport yacht and exposing her innards to the sea.
These are the kinds of titanic things you can never expect, like poking a 200-pound artificial reef marker through the anchor locker on a delivery voyage, or running aground on a shoal 28 miles off shore or striking an iceberg at exactly the right place and angle to rip open an unsinkable ocean liner.
Not your daddy’s Hatteras
Hatteras has launched several generations of sport fishing yachts capable or running at 30-plus knots and safely returning through a pounding sea when a big money marlin tournament is on the line. Built in Hatteras’ new facility in Swansboro, North Carolina, -Hatterascal -- the new 60-- was the first Hatteras to feature a completely resin-infused hull, rather than one built up of layers of hand-laid fiberglass. The elegant, patented resin-infusion process known as Seemann Composites Resin Infusion Molding Process or SCRIMP produces a more uniform hull thickness from one hull to the next, according to Hatteras, as well as the most ideal glass-to-resin ratio possible. The solid-fiberglass hull bottom includes beefy support for key areas such as the tunnels, shaft log and strut locations, Hatteras says. Divinycell coring is infused into the hull sides, decks and superstructure to add stiffness and reduce weight, Hatteras explains.
That year they showed the new 60 GT Hatterascal Tournament Edition at the Miami boat show and invited select journalists, including myself, to test her at sea, fishing off Old Bahama Bay, West End in the Bahamas. Dean and I both have been Innovation Awards judges for the National Marine Manufacturers’ Association testing a wide range of products from electronics to yachts. I was up the second day; Dean was third on this test for the press. The guys and gals from Power and Motoryacht were first, clearing customs with their mysterious gear bag filled with precise measuring devices, as if yachtsmen who can afford to fish marlin tournaments really care much about fuel efficiency or noise levels. The PMY crew was prepared to measure these things on a yacht that was designed and built primarily to look good while speeding to the fishing grounds, and survive.
Then it happened
The 2007 iteration of Hatterascal was destined to be sorely tested, almost immediately. David Ritchie, the former editor-in-chief of Marlin Magazine who was then head of marketing for Hatteras and Capt. Dave Fields and the PMY crew set out for the fishing grounds, far away, near White Sand Ridge adjacent to the Little Bahamas Bank.
Fields pushed the single lever controls to the floor. Hatterascal rose to an impressive, foam-spewing plane, throbbing with rare 8 blade Nibral props, like those on submarines. Not long after she reached her 36-knot cruise speed, Hatterascal encountered a problem. Dense, polyester cargo netting flowed under the speeding hull. The witnesses said it sounded like it hit a whale. The cargo net was spun up into the new, untested, infrastructure with its massive, counter rotating Caterpillar engines. It filled the specially designed tunnel chamber and brought Hatterascal to a loud and stunning stop.
There are two important things the cargo net did not do. It did not stall the Cats, and that is saying a lot with the recent history of Cats stalling when shifted from forward through neutral to reverse under load. And it did not yank the running gear out of the Hatterascal. In fact, other than a scare and a mere bend, Hatterascal was fit to fish. She could make 14 knots with the damaged wheels, once the net was cut away.
We arrived to hear this story and stare at the empty berth. Dave Ritchie promised she would be refitted after a sprint to Palm Beach and back by 8 am the next morning. We marveled at his optimism and visited with the men fishing an elderly Hat at the next berth. They did not have the resources of the Brunswick stockholders so they did not go everywhere at max speed, drinking 120 gallons of fuel each hour. But they did catch some nice Wahoo and grouper and they raised an out-of-season blue marlin.
Hatterascal with spare props made it back for our single day on the water as promised and ran like a scalded dog. It was so fast you had to grab anything that stuck out on the fly bridge to avoid being swept overboard by the wind. It was best to cling to the settee. We caught a large grouper.
That Bertram 63
All of this came to mind when I read about the ignominious demise of the relatively new 63-foot Bertram sport fisherman Absolutely that now sits in about 40 feet of water in the middle of a debris-strewn artificial reef area off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
http://www.bertram.com/images/builtsplash.jpg
As editor of Southern Boating Magazine and The Boating News and as a lifetime resident of Miami I have a proprietary interest in Bertram. The father of a childhood friend was a designer. My father took me up on the bare I-beams of a bank building under construction in downtown Miami to watch the Bertram Moppie head down the Bay and Government Cut on its way to win the Miami to Nassau power boat race. And I was a mate on a private 50-foot Bertram sport fisherman fishing between Islamorada and Bahamas.
According to the crew of the US Coast Guard Station Georgetown, S.C., “two people are safe after the 63-foot sport fishing vessel, Absolutely, they were transporting sank about 20 miles east of Myrtle Beach Friday morning, Nov. 6:
“Jason Milius, 34, and Jamie Castantine, 33, were aboard the vessel when they radioed for help. Good Samaritan's, Craig Hancock, Jeremy Cahoon and Josh White, all from Grantsboro, N.C., aboard the fishing vessel Pacifics were in the vicinity of the sinking vessel when they heard the radio transmission and were able to respond. Once on scene, they safely removed Milius and Castantine from the sinking vessel in good condition.
“Milius and Castantine were hired to transport the vessel from Lindenhurst, N.Y., to West Palm Beach, Fla. The vessel left this morning from Wrightsville Beach, N.C. and destined for a stop-over in Hilton Head, S.C.,” the Coast Guard release said.
“The cause of the incident is under investigation,” the Coast Guard said.
My investigation so far
As it turns out Milius is a yacht broker who moonlights as a delivery captain. Castantine is his squeeze. Instead of hiring another, back-up captain or an engineer familiar with the MTU diesels on board the new boat that he was hired to deliver over 1,600 miles, the yacht broker/captain turned this serious and dangerous job into a cozy cruise for two. It’s a bad start.
How do we know? The captain claims he was at the helm on the fly bridge with his lady friend seated beside him when, all of a sudden, the yacht plunged down the backside of a steep wave at around 30 knots and then it was yanked to one side, then it stopped after the bow and foredeck was ripped open. Sounds like running aground. But that is not what he says happened. He says he doesn’t know what it hit or how it happened or what stopped it. All of a sudden he and his girlfriend were on a 100-mile long rollercoaster ride in the steep chop off the Carolina coast where it is only 5 feet deep, 20 miles off shore. They are having a ball on somebody else’s yacht, flying up and down the steep chop and through the maze of yellow nuns that are used to mark the dozens of artificial reef dive sites off North Carolina and South Carolina.
Although all the buoys have radar reflectors, Captain Milius is not aware he had been running very fast through the shallow, artificial reef, novice diving area that was built from sunken tugs, sunken landing crafts, a sunken oiler, dozens of huge subway cars and who knows what else sticking up.
The yacht broker/Captain says he saw nothing until the bow plunged into the back of a wave and the foredeck of the Bertram was ripped back toward the superstructure. The yacht stopped and sank, stern first, very close to the slightly damaged artificial reef buoy that was placed by the state of South Carolina to mark Bill Perry Reef.
http://www.veromarine.co.nz/dirvz/marine/marine.nsf/Content/PhotoFeature0007
I thought immediately this might be another one of those tragic and mysterious collisions with a floating ocean cargo container. Experts estimate that ships lose about 10,000 containers a year. And there are so many unexplained collisions and disappearances, including the recent mystery disappearance of Jim Grey, one wonders how many killer container collisions take place each year. http://www.kimointernational.org/MaritimeSafetyandPollution.aspx
http://www.csshippingcontainers.co.uk/wordpress/shipping-container-articles/shipping-containers-lost-at-sea/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/31/MISSING.TMP.
And it could be that Absolutely was another victim. The very busy Port of Savannah and the Port of Charleston are in the vicinity and the shallow water far off the coast makes for a pounding and jarring ride for any size vessel. There was a string of bad weather along the Atlantic coast in the fall of 2009 that could have swept containers overboard. When I looked at the underwater photographs of Absolutely that Yacht Forum says were taken a few days after the incident, it was clear that she had run into something. I wondered why the captain did not know what he had hit. I wondered if he could have driven the 200-pound steel and plastic reef buoy through the bow and never saw it or recognized the sound.
Buoys
Fig. 1 - Primary Fishing Reef Buoy
Our largest offshore buoy. Developed in conjunction with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources to mark artificial reefs.Height: 144"
Diameter: 24"
Visibility: 125"
Weight: 200#
Buoyancy: 1300#
Features:
• 24" x 24" aluminum radar reflector and day marker• Heavy Duty steel internal frame with 1" steel yoke• Internal radar reflector• Standard color yellow
Bill Perry Reef Buoy showing impact damage and paint that Bertram says matches the paint on the bottom of Absolutely.
Products - Nun Buoy - Marine Hardware - Marker Buoys
The anchoring mechanism for the Curd reef buoy deployed
by the State of South Carolina to mark its artificial reefs.
I wondered if that was just a coincidence of location and maybe he hit a larger floating object. When I found out that the entire area goes from a few feet deep at Frying Pan Shoals to only 40 or 60 feet deep, constantly roiled by rough seas and filled with dozens of large, unsecured artificial reef debris, it occurred to me that perhaps the ocean currents had tumbled an old ship or one of the newly deposited subway cars just enough that one end lurked there a few feet below the surface.
Subway cars recently deposited to drift to the 45-foot bottom at the Bill Perry Artificial Reef novice dive site where the Absolutely was sunk.
I still wondered why the captain did not see something as obvious on his radar as the line of reef buoys that were placed to warn him to slow down because he was entering a recreational dive site. If he could not see those he might not have seen something as evident as a container or some unexpected artificial reef debris or even the shoals he passed just before the sinking. Then I found this photograph taken recently of Absolutely for its listing. Clearly it shows that the yacht’s fly bridge is designed for the captain to face a living-room size area designed for comfort and cruising but not for maximum forward visibility. In fact the sight lines indicate the captain must have been aware he could not see his bow while seated in the helm seat. A second photo shows that the helm instrumentation was mounted on one of those jazzy motorized consoles where you can push a button and make most of your instruments disappear.
You cannot see any of the bow or foredeck from the helm of Absolutely.
I had one of those on my Bayshore and I closed it in a chop because it seemed like the instruments were taking a beating with the console open. I bet he did too. So he was driving way too fast through a shoal area and a dive site with his instruments out of view and the bow out of view until it plunged into the sea.
With this limited visibility and the captain’s inexperience with the yacht, the captain could have run into a piling on his way out of Wrightsville. Or some local could have run into her bow or he could have run over a buoy or a rock and the Captain would not have known about it unless he heard it. And if he was like the rest of the armchair captains around the nation he probably would have ignored a thump to that trusty, battlewagon, the Bertram.
We all know they are indestructible. We remember the ads. And what difference does a little collision make when you are driving a Bertram?
Not your daddy’s Bertram
Whether the Captain took a blow to the bow on his way down the coast or in some marina or when running over Frying Pan Shoals or out in the middle of the artificial reef junk that bad day of Nov. 6, 2009, we will probably never know. He says he does not know what happened to his boat and he will probably stick to his story. And when the captain of a sunken yacht with his girlfriend on board as his only witness admits that he has no idea what he hit to damage his boat that is a pretty strong admission he was not behaving like a responsible captain driving someone else’s yacht. Worse yet the lawyers are involved and the owner is suing Bertram and Marine Max alleging some deficiency other than the captain.
So I went looking for how this particular Bertram was built. What could cause it to end up on the bottom in the manner it was destroyed with the bow stove in, the anchor locker missing completely the foredeck peeled back and the transom missing?
On the Bertram web site I found a photograph of a Bertram 63 being assembled. It explained: “Instead of only screwing and caulking our hand-laid, one-piece superstructure to the hull (the standard practice), we wrap the deck-hull joint in 3/8-inch aluminum for an extraordinarily strong and rigid bond.” And it showed a separate set of components being set in place to create the bow deck.
Drawing from Bertram web site
As for details about hull construction all I could find was this: “Bertrams are legendary for providing the smoothest and driest ride while out in the roughest of waters. Once you experience the power of Bertram’s legendary deep-V hull as it cuts through the tough seas, we are sure you will agree. These hulls are constructed like no other. The strength and integrity of a fiberglass yacht is as dependent on the engineering as the workmanship. The high-density foam stringers in Bertrams are fully twice the size of our competitors. Extra stringers at key points for added stiffness, along with complete fiberglass flooring pans and underside deck and hull ribbing, maximize the hull integrity and minimize vibration. Instead of only screwing and caulking our hand-laid, one-piece superstructure to the hull (the standard practice), we wrap the deck-hull joint in 3/8-inch aluminum for an extraordinarily strong and rigid bond.”
This copy did not reflect the entire story of the hull composition so I wandered the web until I found the typical glowing account of the debut test ride of the Bertram 63 “battlewagon.” This one from Power and Motor Yacht Magazine in 2004:
“Ferretti also had the Bertram team look at improving construction. The bottom is still solid below the waterline, with Klegecell-cored hull sides, deck, and superstructure. But instead of a conventional stringer system, which is molded, then pumped full of foam and secondarily bonded to the hull, Bertram uses a giant casting sculpted out of high-density, 14-pound foam blocks that are encapsulated and laminated to the hull using longitudinals measuring about eight inches wide. In addition, the thwart members that continue up the hull sides to within ten inches of the sheerline are spaced closer together than on the 60, leaving fewer unsupported areas,” it said. That confirmed that like other builders, Bertram had moved to laminated Klegecell core in its hull sides but left the keel and bottom of the hull solid fiberglass.
So the Bertram 63 is probably as indestructible below the waterline as any other all fiberglass Bertram yacht, but it is also certainly as vulnerable to impact above the waterline where the hull is made of a glass and foam cored composite as any other composite boat. This was not the Captain’s daddy’s Bertram. It is lighter but a heck of lot faster. And when things went bad above the waterline, it was time slow to a crawl and keep this baby afloat. Another 63 endured a decorative delamination below the waterline a while ago and, although the captain drove it some distance back to the dock, further it made it home without incident. Bertram said they were sorry, stood by their product fixed to hull, satisfied the owner and everybody was happy.
That kind of decorative delamination was clearly not the case with Absolutely. Whenever her bow was damaged above the waterline along the way from New York to South Carolina, she was probably doomed when the captain stuck her damaged bow damage into the back of a big sea at 30 knots.
After I studied the underwater photographs taken on Nov. 11, according to Yacht Forum, the entire scenario became as vivid as if I was there. Take a look at this photograph that was provided to http://www.yachtforums.com/ by the owner’s lawyers. Yachtforums.com in an attempt at cleverness cruelly named this one “Bottom Seeking Bertram.”
http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/general-yachting-discussion/12624-yachtforums-exclusive-underwater-pictures-sunk-bertram-630-a.html
These photos show the line where the bow deck once joined to the hull on the port side. Notice where the innards of the bow have been dragged out of the bow and back away from the boat when they were probably snagged by the anchor line.
Once I saw these two photos I realized what had happened. Either by beating the bow up and down in the short chop for hundreds of miles or by beating the bow up and down in the short chop after striking something that split the bow, the anchor locker failed to contain the anchor. The anchor went flying down the port side and, at 30 miles an hour, the speeding rope and chain neatly sliced open the bow of Absolutely right along the rub rail where the hull was secured to the foredeck.
The joint where the anchor chain and line cut the foredeck away from the hull.
Bertram illustration http://www.bertram.com/construction.aspx
In one view I see the Absolutely coming down hard atop the buoy and the aluminum and steel structure puncturing the bow’s anchor locker. I see the anchor line tangle in with the radar reflector, yanking out the anchor and tearing at the side of the cored, foam hull where it connects with aluminum reinforcements to the deck. Once it is breached the bow is open to the sea. The captain, unaware, sends the Absolutely plunging to the bottom of the wave, gulping the ocean and peeling back the severed foredeck from the starboard side.
And I wondered if there could be enough force in all of this to do such as thing. Then I remembered that 30 feet below the surface at the alleged spot of the incident the ocean was littered with a dozen wrecks that the anchor could have snagged. It all would have happened in less than 10 seconds. Without watertight bulkheads to prevent flooding below decks, Absolutely would have been engorged in ocean driven through the huge and growing hole in her foredeck until she was stopped by the resistance of the sea and the tug of her lethal anchor line.
The bow of Absolutely, clearly showing the results of some collision and with the anchor locker totally missing.
About those photos
Here is the other confusion about the underwater photographs. If what the lawyers say is true it shows the crushed bow totally missing the anchor locker and the anchor and line. But look at what is a couple feet behind the bow, it looks like foredeck. And yet the other photos don’t show that deck in that location.
Anyway, you look at that photo and you can clearly tell that somewhere and somehow Absolutely’s composite, cored bow was crunched by impact with something. The port view suggests the cap was sliced clear by the screaming anchor line that was either fouled on the buoy or snagged on something among the reef rubble.
We can tell from the photos of the fly bridge that the company provided for advertising that there is no way a socializing captain could have seen a bobbing cargo container, boat adrift, log, artificial reef buoy, piling, rock or lump of partially submerged flotsam while sitting in that helm chair cruising with a lady friend. He might not have been able to see his bow if he was standing up behind the helm and carefully watching the onrushing sea.
It is fairly clear that the major damage to the foredeck took place after the anchor left the locker and its saw-like line sliced open the bow where it was joined to the port hull. How long after that happened the captain drove the bow at 30 knots into the sea, we cannot know. He doesn’t know. The only thing he says he is sure of is driving the bow into the back of a wave and coming to a halt with sufficient force he hit the deck. By then he knew he was sinking and radioed for help and abandoned ship.
Afterword
I think that delivery captains ought to be compelled to hire a seasoned mate on board for any delivery taking longer than a day. If they are not intimately familiar with the waters they must traverse, they ought to be compelled to study them and file a float plan with the Coast Guard and hire a mate familiar with the course home. The ocean off the Carolinas is amazingly shallow very far off shore. Frying Pan Shoals, just north of the sunken Absolutely is down right lethal.
In this case it is as shallow as five feet deep 25 miles from shore and the average depth is around 40 feet. That makes for a battering short chop. If the Absolutely broker/captain was not familiar with Frying Pan Shoals Slue, that would explain a lot.
This incident also raises the possibility that the South Carolina and North Carolina natural resources people ought to better mark their novice dive sites at the very least. And they ought to secure these objects they are sinking for artificial reefs with strong anchor lines to prevent them from tumbling into shallow water, jutting up or stacking on top of each other and creating other hazards to navigation.
I will bet you that the 30 foot tall tuna tower of Absolutely was a major hazard to navigation that could rip a hole through a hull side in a second if some other idiot delivery captain or newly fledged dive captain went roaring through the Bill Perry Reef area and was punished with 10 seconds of bad luck and bad timing.
Captains in unfamiliar waters ought to be instructed to leave these fancy new automatic consoles in the up position with alarms set on “loud,” so they can see what these very expensive electronics are trying to tell them.
And now is a good time to consider loading each cargo container traveling on deck of a container ship with a simple roll of bright orange cloth, treated so that it will float. Then, for the time that the container is near the surface, any boat captain who is paying attention can see the two or three hundred yards of floating fabric and know it indicates there is something different and potentially dangerous nearby in the water.
Finally, it is sad that a lovely 63 Bertram had to pay the price for this lesson that we who love Bertrams must all confront. The old ones were built like battering rams and advertised as indestructible. But the new, cored hull Bertrams are not any stronger than any other cored hull boat of their size, just faster. And we must stop treating them as if they are just as heavy and rough as our daddy’s Bertram.
Things that go bump in the day
By Rick Eyerdam
A cargo container adrift at sea.
A couple years ago International Yachtsman Magazine hired me to test fish the newest Hatteras sport fishing yacht. This was big deal for them because the Hatterascal, as the showboat is called each year, employed a new construction technique in the never-ending effort to build lighter, faster sport fishermen. The solution may be to stop building hulls entirely out of hard, stiff, heavy, solid fiberglass and, instead build as much of the hull as you can safely get away with using foam cells or balsa coring in the hull sides.
In the old days, production boats including Hatteras and Bertram were laid up with literally tons of solid fiberglass. Originally the Hargrave Hatteras was a displacement hull, so it didn’t matter that much if the hull was too heavy to get up on a plane. But the Bertrams were always straked planning hulls built for speed, designed to embrace V8 gas engines that were strong enough to lift the hull, like wings in water, reducing the drag and increasing the potential for speed.
These early Bertrams established the reputation for sturdiness that was reinforced over many hurricane seasons even as the boats grew larger and diesels intervened. After the storm waves and raging winds most Bertrams were found strewn along crushed sea walls after having knocked over a row of pilings in the welter of a hurricane storm surge. The superstructure – the cabin which is made of lighter, laminated and cored material—might be cracked, but the hulls with their thick layers of fiberglass and resin and gelcoat usually faired better than the obstacles with which they collided.
The rich don’t mind
Truly rich men still don’t mind how fuel inefficient their sport fishing boat might be so long as it can run faster than 40 miles-an-hour and survive the kind of pounding a sport fishing yacht must endure running further than a hundred miles through rock hard wave fronts to reach the dock in time for the weigh-in with the winning Marlin. Steve Lewis, owner of Lewis Marine Supply put Viking on the map when he landed a winning blue marlin in a winner-take-all, million-dollar marlin tournament off New Jersey. Way too far away from the weigh-in dock with nasty sea conditions building, and a few hours before time expired, Lewis nevertheless ordered his captain to put the hammer down on his 47-foot Viking, Freebee, and drive it until the Viking either fell apart or made it to the dock. A million dollars later Viking had an answer to all those niggling Bertram and Hatteras owners who belittled the Vikings as somehow unworthy. Thank Neptune there wasn’t a blogosphere back then.
Back to the Hatterascal
My friend Dean Travis Clarke is a world renown story teller, editor and television personality and when he heard what had happened to the new Hatterascal the day the Power and Motoryacht Magazine crew was aboard he said it proved the virtue of her new design. Then he explained why. He recalled how this other sport yacht was traveling a couple years ago off the coast. It was laid up like almost all of the great sport yachts. She had dense layers of hand-laid fiberglass and resin fitted in a precise mold with her stringers boxed in and secured to sustain motor mounts for this new generation of high speed, high torque, wheel spinning diesel engines, the legacy of Detroit’s Roger Penske and, at Caterpillar, that elfin John Fabick. This boat was built to carry the mail at 40-plus and she would have done it had she not encountered a hawser line; the thick braided rope with which they secure huge ships to docks. With counter-rotating props, the hawser challenged all the physics and engineering of boat building by catching both spinning props and tying them together, working against each other. The result was all but inevitable. Something had to give. The counter-rotating 1000 hp torque of the engines ripped the running gear and its carriage from the sport yacht as the six-inch thick line apprehended the engines, exploding the running gear of the sport yacht and exposing her innards to the sea.
These are the kinds of titanic things you can never expect, like poking a 200-pound artificial reef marker through the anchor locker on a delivery voyage, or running aground on a shoal 28 miles off shore or striking an iceberg at exactly the right place and angle to rip open an unsinkable ocean liner.
Not your daddy’s Hatteras
Hatteras has launched several generations of sport fishing yachts capable or running at 30-plus knots and safely returning through a pounding sea when a big money marlin tournament is on the line. Built in Hatteras’ new facility in Swansboro, North Carolina, -Hatterascal -- the new 60-- was the first Hatteras to feature a completely resin-infused hull, rather than one built up of layers of hand-laid fiberglass. The elegant, patented resin-infusion process known as Seemann Composites Resin Infusion Molding Process or SCRIMP produces a more uniform hull thickness from one hull to the next, according to Hatteras, as well as the most ideal glass-to-resin ratio possible. The solid-fiberglass hull bottom includes beefy support for key areas such as the tunnels, shaft log and strut locations, Hatteras says. Divinycell coring is infused into the hull sides, decks and superstructure to add stiffness and reduce weight, Hatteras explains.
That year they showed the new 60 GT Hatterascal Tournament Edition at the Miami boat show and invited select journalists, including myself, to test her at sea, fishing off Old Bahama Bay, West End in the Bahamas. Dean and I both have been Innovation Awards judges for the National Marine Manufacturers’ Association testing a wide range of products from electronics to yachts. I was up the second day; Dean was third on this test for the press. The guys and gals from Power and Motoryacht were first, clearing customs with their mysterious gear bag filled with precise measuring devices, as if yachtsmen who can afford to fish marlin tournaments really care much about fuel efficiency or noise levels. The PMY crew was prepared to measure these things on a yacht that was designed and built primarily to look good while speeding to the fishing grounds, and survive.
Then it happened
The 2007 iteration of Hatterascal was destined to be sorely tested, almost immediately. David Ritchie, the former editor-in-chief of Marlin Magazine who was then head of marketing for Hatteras and Capt. Dave Fields and the PMY crew set out for the fishing grounds, far away, near White Sand Ridge adjacent to the Little Bahamas Bank.
Fields pushed the single lever controls to the floor. Hatterascal rose to an impressive, foam-spewing plane, throbbing with rare 8 blade Nibral props, like those on submarines. Not long after she reached her 36-knot cruise speed, Hatterascal encountered a problem. Dense, polyester cargo netting flowed under the speeding hull. The witnesses said it sounded like it hit a whale. The cargo net was spun up into the new, untested, infrastructure with its massive, counter rotating Caterpillar engines. It filled the specially designed tunnel chamber and brought Hatterascal to a loud and stunning stop.
There are two important things the cargo net did not do. It did not stall the Cats, and that is saying a lot with the recent history of Cats stalling when shifted from forward through neutral to reverse under load. And it did not yank the running gear out of the Hatterascal. In fact, other than a scare and a mere bend, Hatterascal was fit to fish. She could make 14 knots with the damaged wheels, once the net was cut away.
We arrived to hear this story and stare at the empty berth. Dave Ritchie promised she would be refitted after a sprint to Palm Beach and back by 8 am the next morning. We marveled at his optimism and visited with the men fishing an elderly Hat at the next berth. They did not have the resources of the Brunswick stockholders so they did not go everywhere at max speed, drinking 120 gallons of fuel each hour. But they did catch some nice Wahoo and grouper and they raised an out-of-season blue marlin.
Hatterascal with spare props made it back for our single day on the water as promised and ran like a scalded dog. It was so fast you had to grab anything that stuck out on the fly bridge to avoid being swept overboard by the wind. It was best to cling to the settee. We caught a large grouper.
That Bertram 63
All of this came to mind when I read about the ignominious demise of the relatively new 63-foot Bertram sport fisherman Absolutely that now sits in about 40 feet of water in the middle of a debris-strewn artificial reef area off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
http://www.bertram.com/images/builtsplash.jpg
As editor of Southern Boating Magazine and The Boating News and as a lifetime resident of Miami I have a proprietary interest in Bertram. The father of a childhood friend was a designer. My father took me up on the bare I-beams of a bank building under construction in downtown Miami to watch the Bertram Moppie head down the Bay and Government Cut on its way to win the Miami to Nassau power boat race. And I was a mate on a private 50-foot Bertram sport fisherman fishing between Islamorada and Bahamas.
According to the crew of the US Coast Guard Station Georgetown, S.C., “two people are safe after the 63-foot sport fishing vessel, Absolutely, they were transporting sank about 20 miles east of Myrtle Beach Friday morning, Nov. 6:
“Jason Milius, 34, and Jamie Castantine, 33, were aboard the vessel when they radioed for help. Good Samaritan's, Craig Hancock, Jeremy Cahoon and Josh White, all from Grantsboro, N.C., aboard the fishing vessel Pacifics were in the vicinity of the sinking vessel when they heard the radio transmission and were able to respond. Once on scene, they safely removed Milius and Castantine from the sinking vessel in good condition.
“Milius and Castantine were hired to transport the vessel from Lindenhurst, N.Y., to West Palm Beach, Fla. The vessel left this morning from Wrightsville Beach, N.C. and destined for a stop-over in Hilton Head, S.C.,” the Coast Guard release said.
“The cause of the incident is under investigation,” the Coast Guard said.
My investigation so far
As it turns out Milius is a yacht broker who moonlights as a delivery captain. Castantine is his squeeze. Instead of hiring another, back-up captain or an engineer familiar with the MTU diesels on board the new boat that he was hired to deliver over 1,600 miles, the yacht broker/captain turned this serious and dangerous job into a cozy cruise for two. It’s a bad start.
How do we know? The captain claims he was at the helm on the fly bridge with his lady friend seated beside him when, all of a sudden, the yacht plunged down the backside of a steep wave at around 30 knots and then it was yanked to one side, then it stopped after the bow and foredeck was ripped open. Sounds like running aground. But that is not what he says happened. He says he doesn’t know what it hit or how it happened or what stopped it. All of a sudden he and his girlfriend were on a 100-mile long rollercoaster ride in the steep chop off the Carolina coast where it is only 5 feet deep, 20 miles off shore. They are having a ball on somebody else’s yacht, flying up and down the steep chop and through the maze of yellow nuns that are used to mark the dozens of artificial reef dive sites off North Carolina and South Carolina.
Although all the buoys have radar reflectors, Captain Milius is not aware he had been running very fast through the shallow, artificial reef, novice diving area that was built from sunken tugs, sunken landing crafts, a sunken oiler, dozens of huge subway cars and who knows what else sticking up.
The yacht broker/Captain says he saw nothing until the bow plunged into the back of a wave and the foredeck of the Bertram was ripped back toward the superstructure. The yacht stopped and sank, stern first, very close to the slightly damaged artificial reef buoy that was placed by the state of South Carolina to mark Bill Perry Reef.
http://www.veromarine.co.nz/dirvz/marine/marine.nsf/Content/PhotoFeature0007
I thought immediately this might be another one of those tragic and mysterious collisions with a floating ocean cargo container. Experts estimate that ships lose about 10,000 containers a year. And there are so many unexplained collisions and disappearances, including the recent mystery disappearance of Jim Grey, one wonders how many killer container collisions take place each year. http://www.kimointernational.org/MaritimeSafetyandPollution.aspx
http://www.csshippingcontainers.co.uk/wordpress/shipping-container-articles/shipping-containers-lost-at-sea/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/31/MISSING.TMP.
And it could be that Absolutely was another victim. The very busy Port of Savannah and the Port of Charleston are in the vicinity and the shallow water far off the coast makes for a pounding and jarring ride for any size vessel. There was a string of bad weather along the Atlantic coast in the fall of 2009 that could have swept containers overboard. When I looked at the underwater photographs of Absolutely that Yacht Forum says were taken a few days after the incident, it was clear that she had run into something. I wondered why the captain did not know what he had hit. I wondered if he could have driven the 200-pound steel and plastic reef buoy through the bow and never saw it or recognized the sound.
Buoys
Fig. 1 - Primary Fishing Reef Buoy
Our largest offshore buoy. Developed in conjunction with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources to mark artificial reefs.Height: 144"
Diameter: 24"
Visibility: 125"
Weight: 200#
Buoyancy: 1300#
Features:
• 24" x 24" aluminum radar reflector and day marker• Heavy Duty steel internal frame with 1" steel yoke• Internal radar reflector• Standard color yellow
Bill Perry Reef Buoy showing impact damage and paint that Bertram says matches the paint on the bottom of Absolutely.
Products - Nun Buoy - Marine Hardware - Marker Buoys
The anchoring mechanism for the Curd reef buoy deployed
by the State of South Carolina to mark its artificial reefs.
I wondered if that was just a coincidence of location and maybe he hit a larger floating object. When I found out that the entire area goes from a few feet deep at Frying Pan Shoals to only 40 or 60 feet deep, constantly roiled by rough seas and filled with dozens of large, unsecured artificial reef debris, it occurred to me that perhaps the ocean currents had tumbled an old ship or one of the newly deposited subway cars just enough that one end lurked there a few feet below the surface.
Subway cars recently deposited to drift to the 45-foot bottom at the Bill Perry Artificial Reef novice dive site where the Absolutely was sunk.
I still wondered why the captain did not see something as obvious on his radar as the line of reef buoys that were placed to warn him to slow down because he was entering a recreational dive site. If he could not see those he might not have seen something as evident as a container or some unexpected artificial reef debris or even the shoals he passed just before the sinking. Then I found this photograph taken recently of Absolutely for its listing. Clearly it shows that the yacht’s fly bridge is designed for the captain to face a living-room size area designed for comfort and cruising but not for maximum forward visibility. In fact the sight lines indicate the captain must have been aware he could not see his bow while seated in the helm seat. A second photo shows that the helm instrumentation was mounted on one of those jazzy motorized consoles where you can push a button and make most of your instruments disappear.
You cannot see any of the bow or foredeck from the helm of Absolutely.
I had one of those on my Bayshore and I closed it in a chop because it seemed like the instruments were taking a beating with the console open. I bet he did too. So he was driving way too fast through a shoal area and a dive site with his instruments out of view and the bow out of view until it plunged into the sea.
With this limited visibility and the captain’s inexperience with the yacht, the captain could have run into a piling on his way out of Wrightsville. Or some local could have run into her bow or he could have run over a buoy or a rock and the Captain would not have known about it unless he heard it. And if he was like the rest of the armchair captains around the nation he probably would have ignored a thump to that trusty, battlewagon, the Bertram.
We all know they are indestructible. We remember the ads. And what difference does a little collision make when you are driving a Bertram?
Not your daddy’s Bertram
Whether the Captain took a blow to the bow on his way down the coast or in some marina or when running over Frying Pan Shoals or out in the middle of the artificial reef junk that bad day of Nov. 6, 2009, we will probably never know. He says he does not know what happened to his boat and he will probably stick to his story. And when the captain of a sunken yacht with his girlfriend on board as his only witness admits that he has no idea what he hit to damage his boat that is a pretty strong admission he was not behaving like a responsible captain driving someone else’s yacht. Worse yet the lawyers are involved and the owner is suing Bertram and Marine Max alleging some deficiency other than the captain.
So I went looking for how this particular Bertram was built. What could cause it to end up on the bottom in the manner it was destroyed with the bow stove in, the anchor locker missing completely the foredeck peeled back and the transom missing?
On the Bertram web site I found a photograph of a Bertram 63 being assembled. It explained: “Instead of only screwing and caulking our hand-laid, one-piece superstructure to the hull (the standard practice), we wrap the deck-hull joint in 3/8-inch aluminum for an extraordinarily strong and rigid bond.” And it showed a separate set of components being set in place to create the bow deck.
Drawing from Bertram web site
As for details about hull construction all I could find was this: “Bertrams are legendary for providing the smoothest and driest ride while out in the roughest of waters. Once you experience the power of Bertram’s legendary deep-V hull as it cuts through the tough seas, we are sure you will agree. These hulls are constructed like no other. The strength and integrity of a fiberglass yacht is as dependent on the engineering as the workmanship. The high-density foam stringers in Bertrams are fully twice the size of our competitors. Extra stringers at key points for added stiffness, along with complete fiberglass flooring pans and underside deck and hull ribbing, maximize the hull integrity and minimize vibration. Instead of only screwing and caulking our hand-laid, one-piece superstructure to the hull (the standard practice), we wrap the deck-hull joint in 3/8-inch aluminum for an extraordinarily strong and rigid bond.”
This copy did not reflect the entire story of the hull composition so I wandered the web until I found the typical glowing account of the debut test ride of the Bertram 63 “battlewagon.” This one from Power and Motor Yacht Magazine in 2004:
“Ferretti also had the Bertram team look at improving construction. The bottom is still solid below the waterline, with Klegecell-cored hull sides, deck, and superstructure. But instead of a conventional stringer system, which is molded, then pumped full of foam and secondarily bonded to the hull, Bertram uses a giant casting sculpted out of high-density, 14-pound foam blocks that are encapsulated and laminated to the hull using longitudinals measuring about eight inches wide. In addition, the thwart members that continue up the hull sides to within ten inches of the sheerline are spaced closer together than on the 60, leaving fewer unsupported areas,” it said. That confirmed that like other builders, Bertram had moved to laminated Klegecell core in its hull sides but left the keel and bottom of the hull solid fiberglass.
So the Bertram 63 is probably as indestructible below the waterline as any other all fiberglass Bertram yacht, but it is also certainly as vulnerable to impact above the waterline where the hull is made of a glass and foam cored composite as any other composite boat. This was not the Captain’s daddy’s Bertram. It is lighter but a heck of lot faster. And when things went bad above the waterline, it was time slow to a crawl and keep this baby afloat. Another 63 endured a decorative delamination below the waterline a while ago and, although the captain drove it some distance back to the dock, further it made it home without incident. Bertram said they were sorry, stood by their product fixed to hull, satisfied the owner and everybody was happy.
That kind of decorative delamination was clearly not the case with Absolutely. Whenever her bow was damaged above the waterline along the way from New York to South Carolina, she was probably doomed when the captain stuck her damaged bow damage into the back of a big sea at 30 knots.
After I studied the underwater photographs taken on Nov. 11, according to Yacht Forum, the entire scenario became as vivid as if I was there. Take a look at this photograph that was provided to http://www.yachtforums.com/ by the owner’s lawyers. Yachtforums.com in an attempt at cleverness cruelly named this one “Bottom Seeking Bertram.”
http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/general-yachting-discussion/12624-yachtforums-exclusive-underwater-pictures-sunk-bertram-630-a.html
These photos show the line where the bow deck once joined to the hull on the port side. Notice where the innards of the bow have been dragged out of the bow and back away from the boat when they were probably snagged by the anchor line.
Once I saw these two photos I realized what had happened. Either by beating the bow up and down in the short chop for hundreds of miles or by beating the bow up and down in the short chop after striking something that split the bow, the anchor locker failed to contain the anchor. The anchor went flying down the port side and, at 30 miles an hour, the speeding rope and chain neatly sliced open the bow of Absolutely right along the rub rail where the hull was secured to the foredeck.
The joint where the anchor chain and line cut the foredeck away from the hull.
Bertram illustration http://www.bertram.com/construction.aspx
In one view I see the Absolutely coming down hard atop the buoy and the aluminum and steel structure puncturing the bow’s anchor locker. I see the anchor line tangle in with the radar reflector, yanking out the anchor and tearing at the side of the cored, foam hull where it connects with aluminum reinforcements to the deck. Once it is breached the bow is open to the sea. The captain, unaware, sends the Absolutely plunging to the bottom of the wave, gulping the ocean and peeling back the severed foredeck from the starboard side.
And I wondered if there could be enough force in all of this to do such as thing. Then I remembered that 30 feet below the surface at the alleged spot of the incident the ocean was littered with a dozen wrecks that the anchor could have snagged. It all would have happened in less than 10 seconds. Without watertight bulkheads to prevent flooding below decks, Absolutely would have been engorged in ocean driven through the huge and growing hole in her foredeck until she was stopped by the resistance of the sea and the tug of her lethal anchor line.
The bow of Absolutely, clearly showing the results of some collision and with the anchor locker totally missing.
About those photos
Here is the other confusion about the underwater photographs. If what the lawyers say is true it shows the crushed bow totally missing the anchor locker and the anchor and line. But look at what is a couple feet behind the bow, it looks like foredeck. And yet the other photos don’t show that deck in that location.
Anyway, you look at that photo and you can clearly tell that somewhere and somehow Absolutely’s composite, cored bow was crunched by impact with something. The port view suggests the cap was sliced clear by the screaming anchor line that was either fouled on the buoy or snagged on something among the reef rubble.
We can tell from the photos of the fly bridge that the company provided for advertising that there is no way a socializing captain could have seen a bobbing cargo container, boat adrift, log, artificial reef buoy, piling, rock or lump of partially submerged flotsam while sitting in that helm chair cruising with a lady friend. He might not have been able to see his bow if he was standing up behind the helm and carefully watching the onrushing sea.
It is fairly clear that the major damage to the foredeck took place after the anchor left the locker and its saw-like line sliced open the bow where it was joined to the port hull. How long after that happened the captain drove the bow at 30 knots into the sea, we cannot know. He doesn’t know. The only thing he says he is sure of is driving the bow into the back of a wave and coming to a halt with sufficient force he hit the deck. By then he knew he was sinking and radioed for help and abandoned ship.
Afterword
I think that delivery captains ought to be compelled to hire a seasoned mate on board for any delivery taking longer than a day. If they are not intimately familiar with the waters they must traverse, they ought to be compelled to study them and file a float plan with the Coast Guard and hire a mate familiar with the course home. The ocean off the Carolinas is amazingly shallow very far off shore. Frying Pan Shoals, just north of the sunken Absolutely is down right lethal.
In this case it is as shallow as five feet deep 25 miles from shore and the average depth is around 40 feet. That makes for a battering short chop. If the Absolutely broker/captain was not familiar with Frying Pan Shoals Slue, that would explain a lot.
This incident also raises the possibility that the South Carolina and North Carolina natural resources people ought to better mark their novice dive sites at the very least. And they ought to secure these objects they are sinking for artificial reefs with strong anchor lines to prevent them from tumbling into shallow water, jutting up or stacking on top of each other and creating other hazards to navigation.
I will bet you that the 30 foot tall tuna tower of Absolutely was a major hazard to navigation that could rip a hole through a hull side in a second if some other idiot delivery captain or newly fledged dive captain went roaring through the Bill Perry Reef area and was punished with 10 seconds of bad luck and bad timing.
Captains in unfamiliar waters ought to be instructed to leave these fancy new automatic consoles in the up position with alarms set on “loud,” so they can see what these very expensive electronics are trying to tell them.
And now is a good time to consider loading each cargo container traveling on deck of a container ship with a simple roll of bright orange cloth, treated so that it will float. Then, for the time that the container is near the surface, any boat captain who is paying attention can see the two or three hundred yards of floating fabric and know it indicates there is something different and potentially dangerous nearby in the water.
Finally, it is sad that a lovely 63 Bertram had to pay the price for this lesson that we who love Bertrams must all confront. The old ones were built like battering rams and advertised as indestructible. But the new, cored hull Bertrams are not any stronger than any other cored hull boat of their size, just faster. And we must stop treating them as if they are just as heavy and rough as our daddy’s Bertram.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tiger Wood's babe selection
The other me has been wondering about Tiger Woods but afraid to say anything. I really like Tiger and watch more golf when he is competing than when he is out. This mistress mess up is a surprise to me because he seemed to have his life on an orderly and rather ordinary family path, despite the influence of Barkley and MJ. Then we get this succession of girfriends, some of whom seem to have been paid for their friendship. And the other me is worried that racists feelings are creeping in when I ask: Did Tiger buy, borrow or woo any African-American female companions? Why not? With such a lovely European model wife, why the need to sneek around with barflies, bimbos and tinsel tarts? Which one does not have a tramp stamp? And which one has the best?
The other me says it is about time I build a personal blog, seperate and distinct from my business blog South East Shipping News. So this the beginning. Ironically my horoscope today said not to begin anything new. Instead it suggested I continue projects I started recently. That wouild be either one of two things. The Optional Delusion, my book about the exploration of Mars which I am updating to resubmit to agents and editors, or my colonoscopy. That project began yesterday with consuming the funky brine. This morning some very skilled doctors gave me a blast of Michael Jackson medicine and a slipped calmly into darkness. When I awoke they said I should come back in five years when I might have a reason for another checkup. Funny, national liberal public radio this morning had a special report on colon cancer screening that I heard while riding the porcelain stallion.
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