Copying a 31 Bertram in Quepos Costa Rica

[bobo23]

Really cool. Wondering how you are planning to do the transom.


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[GringoJohn]

Well the second half did not go fast, but it did go. And now we have a copy of both sides to work with.





And then we have a nice and clean Bertram that is ready to put back together!

[GringoJohn]

Originally Posted by bobo23

Really cool. Wondering how you are planning to do the transom.


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I am going to build forms for it. First we'll get the back cut and the sides very very straight. And then I want to add some roundness to the top part of the transom to give the mate more room to run around in the back. And every foot I'll take out some curve until the bottom is flat.

I'll document the process with lots of pictures. We are still painting the original right now, but when we start building again I'll post some pictures!

[GringoJohn]

If ever we had an idea that wasn't going to work, this is the one. Harold is convinced we can copy this front with foam before we give the boat back. This is the hardest curve to copy, if we can copy these two, the rest of the boat will be time consuming but easy. i don't even know what his plan is exactly, but I know it involves sticking strips of foam to the masking and then glassing it. We're going to try it tomorrow, and then probably have to paint the front of this boat again!



I guess it never hurts to try, if it works great, if not we'll do something else.

[GringoJohn]

Well today was one of those days where everything just went soo much better than I would have thought. And now I've gone crazy. I'll get to the pictures of today in a bit. Honestly, this is a fun project, but it just hasn't blown my socks off yet. I mean, it's been done quite a bit, people copying the old berts. But then I came across this article:

http://www.oceanofnews.com/classic-r...ew-bertram-35/

So I'll summarize. Bertram is building the 31 bert again, but they are doing it in 35 feet. I gotta try it. Here are some pictures of the new, classic styled, 35 bert:







The big difference is the beam of 12 feet 5 inches, where as the old 31 is 11 feet 2 inches. And then it's 4 feet longer.

I can't make mine wider, i just can't swing that, but I wonder if I could add a few feet. Maybe make mine 3 foot longer, give me a bigger cab, a little more nose, and a foot more of cockpit? I could just use the same front of the cab, but extend the back part a foot and a half. Give 9 inches up in front of the cab and then 9 inches in the cockpit. Plus i can round the transom up top to gain an extra 7-8 inches in the cockpit, and I have a bigger boat that costs about the same to build and is still light as it'll be all foam cored and basic. Anyway, bringing a bunch of pictures to the shop tomorrow and we're going to look at the mold and see what we come up with.

Alright, onto the pictures from today. harold cut small strips, and used contact cement to hold them to the tape. We just put a small dot a glue on top, in the middle and on bottom, so that it will be easy to take off. It wrapped around easy, and then we put fairing with cabosil and resin in the cracks to stiffen it up, and we'll sand it and glass the outside tomorrow. I'm thinking and hoping it'll come off easy, but either way, it's coming off, and it took the form very nicely. Just one days worth of work, and we have a perfect divinycell copy of the front of the cabin, which I feel was the hardest part.

[GringoJohn]

Well we pushed the two sides of the mold together today after work just to goof off. They look like they might fit together one day!



And then we glassed over the divinycell strips. And then decided to copy the top part as well. And we got that glassed over too. My money is we rip off the paint tomorrow and have to repaint, but I still have a gallon of primer and paint ready to go if that's the case. We'll see how bad it is tomorrow...



But dang they turned out nice. Glass on the inside, and that cab is done in just two days. That's fairly quick. I think we found our groove again. i'll take some damage pictures tomorrow. I wish we had used packing tape and it probably wouldn't have been as much carnage.

Tomorrow we will probably just go ahead and cut the sides already too. Just a trace and cut type of deal, then the whole cabin will be really close. Just need the rest of the boat....

[swamp snorkler]

Keep the updates coming.....

Hoe many different sites do you post this on?

[GringoJohn]

Alright, trying to think where I left off. We got the foam on both the upstairs and downstairs front part of the cabin. We then pulled them off and this is what the ROUGH mold / copy looks like. We put the boards on them to straighten them up to glass the inside. With just one side glassed they are flimsy.







Then we spent the better part of the last two weeks, maybe more, painting, wet sanding, assembling, wirings, aligning motors, putting back in rudders, thru hulls, and just everything we could think of to the original. We even made them another 4 tuna tubes and stuck them to the back. Boat goes into the water TOMORROW!!!!



And then Harold went ahead and clean cut the edges of the two pieces of the cabin. What I don't have pictures of is that we took cardboard, like a fridge box, and made a trace of the rest of both of the cabins. And we have that traced onto the DivinyCell. And then since we are adding 3-4 feet to the boat, we added 1.5 feet to the bottom part of the cabin, and a foot to the upstairs station as well. Those pieces we stuck on at the end of the day today, and hopefully tomorrow we can put the long sides on the cabin.



More pictures coming soon, sorry for the delay

[GringoJohn]

And then quick side story, there was a boat here a long time ago, maybe 15 years back that kicked everybody's butt offshore. It was called the Galleton, which I think means big cookie. Anyway, it was a 38 Bertram WideBody. I remember the last time I saw it, was around 7 years ago, and the fishing was slow out there. I finished the day with 2 sail releases, and right next to me the Galleton had released 9 and was top boat in the fleet. It always did that, it was just one of those boats that really raised the fish. My best friend was driving it at the time, and he was joking with me that he would put out less teasers, and just the crappiest one he could find, and whatever he put out, the boat raised fish.

Ok, so then about 6 years ago, the owner sold the boat, and then it turned over again, and again, and then somebody came along and really redid the whole thing nice. My friend Gener was in charge of the refit. And sneaky Gener knew how good the boat raised fish, so one day when the owner was out of town, Gener did the SAME THING we are doing here to the Galleton. Took a mold of both sides. Completely secret like, the owner had no idea.

So Gener had the molds hidden away, but now both the Galleton and the new owner are long gone, but Gener never had the money to build one. So he sold the mold a few months back to a guy that is planning on destroying them and turning them into a commercial boat. I didn't know they were for sale, but I found out after they were sold. So the new owner refused to let me copy them, until yesterday. The owner of the shop, and a few of the really good fiberglass guys here went and convinced the owner to let me use them to make a hull before he destroys them

SO, if anybody is still reading... Monday we stop this project to fix the other mold. I'm not going to build the whole boat, but I do want to setup the mold, make the hull and put a few bulkheads and stringers in it to keep it stable. I have to move fast because they are about to use the mold as a boat and if I don't do it now it will be gone forever So I'll just post the other build in here with this one, and we'll have a 31 bert stretched to a 34 or 35 going, and then the 38 widebody which I am going to add 2 feet to, just so I can have a 40 footer. More coming soon!

[eman]

What has happened since June???

[swamp snorkler]

I love your tenacity.

[swamp snorkler]

Updates Gringo John?

[GringoJohn]

Ok, well I guess we are starting. Been one thing after another and I had to keep putting this off. I think I already wrote about all the new gear they made us buy, and then after that they passed a new law where they have a special tax for charter boats. And we owe last year too! Welcome to Costa Rica. But now, finally seeing the light, I guess we'll start putting together a boat! The good thing is, the owner of the 40 mold was also hit pretty hard by all the new laws, so he didn't destroy the mold to make a commercial boat yet. So I don't think I'm going to finish the 40 footer first, but I am going to make the 40 foot hull first.

Here is how the hull started. It's been outside in the yard for about 15 years now:




We moved it under the shade, at least half of it. Wow, this thing is heavy and I have never worked on something so big. This will be fun




So to start we made some holes in the ground




And then we are going to put whatever we can find in them to support the mold



Found a bunch of scrap metal at the yard next door. I have been collecting beams for a year now from the recycling place. They have some big stuff. I never really had a plan for why I was collecting them, but I guess it all came together. Harold is happy to be building another boat. And he's good at carrying big heavy beams, there are two guys on the other end




And then here is the 31 bert mold. I'll probably finish the 31 first.




The goal right now is I just want to save enough money to buy the glass to make the hull and sides. I figure it'll take us a month to get this thing setup and ready to do. It is a 38 now, the old widebody 38 bertram they made 30 years back that had the ugly cabin on them. This one will be cooler. Somebody cut the last foot off of the mold, and I'm going to add two more feet so I have a 40. So we're gonna set it up and add 3 feet and see what it looks like ???

Kind of funny, I always thought my first 40 would be wood. But this boat, back when it was in Quepos, was the best boat by far at raising boat. The owner was super cheap, and they only had two white, because the sun faded them out, moldcraft lures. And even with crap gear, it was the boat to beat. I don't know what happened to the boat, the owner didn't take care of the motors at all, and then he abandoned it into the marina. And the marina sold it off, and now it's gone, haven't seen it since. So Quepos needs another one! But this one will be lighter, faster, and catch more fish! I'll post more pictures when I have em!

[GringoJohn]

Well, we got some tubes buried. It was a tough day, but I really enjoyed being back in the shop. Tomorrow we are going to find a level, and shoot some string lines, and hopefully start leveling a mold!

[swamp snorkler]

Nice Update

You can always use a water level if you can find a piece of clear hose.

[Andy C]

Love this thread!! I will be down there in June 2nd.-12th. staying about an hour from you John, would love to plan a couple fishing trips.

[GringoJohn]

Wow, got a lot done today. I'm really worn out. Yesterday we buried the tubes in the ground. Today we got a level out, and used a long hose with water to find levels on the different tubes. And then we welded some more tubes long ways. The idea is to make a level surface, the shop just kind of happened, so it's definitely not a level surface.







Then after doing that, and sticking the port side in, we grabbed the starboard side and stuck it in there and started to level it out. I know these have a really long ways to go, but it feels like we made progress.











Anyways, then we started to stich the front together and the sun went down. Tomorrow we are going to start bolting the two sides together, that is going to be a long process, probably won't have as many photo ops, but I'll shoot pictures of anything interesting along the way. Especially if it means I get out of heavy lifting! Here's a good shot of Harold sewing the front of the boat together:



Right now we are tying ropes to the roof to kind of sort of line things up. Before we do the hull, everthing will be supported from underneath though. The hull was made to be bolted togther, there is a lip in the middle with screw holes. So that should help us out alot. I am trying to find the original boat, it's still in the country somewhere, but I haven't located it yet. I will probably drive out there when I find it and see if I can take measurements. That would be the only way to get the mold to be the same as the original. If anybody reading this has a 38 widebody, or knows where one is and can take some quick external measurements, that would be amazing. Or if not, I'm going to have to go on a road trip and find what happened to the boat this mold was taken off of.

Here's a picture of the hull I'm looking for:



And here is the actual boat this thing was taken off of years ago.




But the company Mar 1 is long gone as so is this boat. It's here somewhere though, I just have to find out where it went. I love the hull, because it raised alot of fish, but we are going to have to make that cabin a lot prettier, because it's ugly. I don't like the step up front. And we are going to be two feet longer.

[GringoJohn]

Not too much to show, we bolted the hull together and then tried to kind of sort of level it just to see what we have. Starting to look like a boat, but bolting it together is not the hard part.









And then we bought a bunch of wood to level the thing out. It has to be 100 percent supported from the bottom, right now we have ropes hanging off of the ceiling holding it up. We are going to put wood in front too where the bow flare is, so we can adjust that and make it look right. Here's around wood we got.



The problem that I'm seeing, is I don't want to change the deadrise in the back. The original boat rode well and raised fish well, and I want to keep that. So, right now I have a bunch of people in different areas of Costa Rica looking for the original boat. Then I will measure the corners in the back, to make sure the boat we are making has the same dead rise. There are a couple of other things I need to measure too, like how far apart the engines are, how far apart the stringers are, how many stringers, where the major bulkheads are, how far forward the motors go from the transom. Just a bunch of measurements that are super important. I might be posting pictures of a road trip early next week if I can find the boat...

[swamp snorkler]

Good luck fining it capt

[Matt G]

Glad to see you're back at it Capt. Keep the updates coming!