BIRTH OF A LEGEND:
FROM STORM-SWEPT VICTORY TO RENOWNED BOAT-BUILDER:
THE COLORFUL ORIGIN OF BERTRAM YACHT
MIAMI, Fla. -- Bertram Yacht, Inc., the Miami-based builder of legendary
sportfishing yachts with seakeeping hulls, will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2011. Marking an astonishing victory in the Miami-Nassau race which featured sixfoot waves and 30-knot winds, that 1960 race changed the course of powerboat history and marked the birth of Bertram Yacht.
What happened on that gusty April day in the Gulf Stream and on across the clear, rough waters on the Bahama Bank would forever alter powerboating, reported Soundings magazine. The race was won by Moppie a 30 wooden prototype designed by C. Raymond Hunt for Miami yacht broker Richard Bertram and named after Bertrams wife. With a constant 24 degree deadrise running fore and aft, Moppie ushered in the era of the modern deep-V hull. The Ray Hunt design turned out to have a terrific ability in rough water, and it set boatbuilding on its ear.
Moppie set a course record of eight hours flat when she crossed the finish line two hours ahead of the second-place boat. That she finished at all was remarkable. Conditions were so poor that the crews aluminum chairs crumpled shortly after the starting signal, and the men found themselves standing on the deck for most of the race.
The only other boat to cross the finish line that day was the one other V hull, essentially a 24 version of Moppie driven by MIT engineer Jim Wynne and boating writer Bill McKeown. The rest of the fleet returned to port or finished the next day. No other single event has had as great an impact on powerboating as the 1960 Miami-Nassau race, said Jim Martenhoff, a pioneer in rough-and tumble South Florida ocean racing and a former boating editor for the Miami Herald. Bertram first encountered Hunts experimental powerboats during Americas Cup trials in 1958. He noticed a 23 fiberglass prototype tender, slicing through the chop of Block Island Sound. Bill Dyer, who came in second in the 1960 Cup, had laid up the fiberglass on the tender after running it himself. Bertram wrote, Knifing through those six-foot seas at 30 knots, this little 23-footer stopped every sailor in his tracks. No one had ever seen powerboat performance to approach it. Bertram was impressed enough to commission a wooden 30-footer from Hunt.
Some observers say Bertram planned to race Moppie from the beginning. Others say he wanted Moppie as a utility boat, but powerboat racing partner Sam Griffith, awed by its prowess in rough water, talked Bertram into competition. Griffith drove and throttled Moppie in the 1960 race. The third member of the team was offshore yachtsman and writer Carleton Mitchell, who served as navigator and filed a story on the race for Sports Illustrated. (Soundings)
After the 1960 race, Bertram turned Moppie into a plug, a mold was cast and the first fiberglass 31 was created. The following year Bertram again won the Miami-Nassau race, this time in Glass Moppie, the fiberglass version of the prototype.
Originally Bertram had no intention of building a company, but the publicity
surrounding the two races sparked such interest in the new hull form that he just couldn't ignore the opportunity. As Bertram told Martenhoff, Jim, there were so damn many yachtsmen waving checkbooks at me that I had to go into business.
Production of the now-legendary 31 Bertram started in a rented warehouse in Hialeah, Fla. The same hull mold produced several race boats, and Bertram dominated the ocean racing circuit, gaining valuable knowledge of structural integrity as applied in constructing Bertrams.
Before retiring the molds, the company built 1,986 Bertram 31s over 16 years, including 50 special-edition models. The 31 came in four configurations: the original open Sportfisherman with a lower steering station and no aft bulkhead, the Fly Bridge Cruiser with a rear bulkhead, a hardtop, an express cruiser, and the Bahia Mar model.
The 31 has become a benchmark both in terms of seakeeping ability and rugged fiberglass construction. It has had a reputation from the start as a boat that will take you out and bring you back. (Soundings).
The Bertram 31 launched Bertram Yacht, Inc., when it was introduced at the 1961 New York National Boat Show as a day boat for Florida sportfishermen. Four decades later, it is a sought-after collectible, aficionados refer to as Bertram Art and one of only 10 boats Marlin dubbed legends in their own time.
In October 1998, after a series of non-boatbuilding owners, Ferretti Group
purchased Bertram Yacht, Inc. A multi-national conglomerate of boat builders based in Italy, Ferretti restored Bertrams financial stability and industry-savvy ownership.
