Copying a 31 Bertram in Quepos Costa Rica

[GringoJohn]

Well it's been about a year since we've done something crazy, so I figured I'm not getting any younger and better get started! I love our Gamefisherman, and almost did a cold molded wood boat, but every tournament i see it's the wood boats, the foam boats, and then a dang 31 foot Bertram up there in the top. I have to see if there is something to this, so if the hull is smooth and raises fish while they are heavy, how much better would they do if we could build one that weighed half! So, I called in a favor and have one month to do what i want with this boat. My friend is headed to Brazil and says I can do as I please, as long as his boat is ready to fish by June first. Sounds like a challenge to me! Here's the boat:




So in typical fashion, as soon as we started to put it on the trailer, we got a torrential rain




But we stuck with it, got soaked and here she is on the trailer!



Earlier today this happened:



That is 60 sheets of 1 inch and .75 inch divinycell. This is going to be fun!

The first goal is to clean this boat up, take all the running gear off, and then we are going to wax it about 6 times, 4 coats of PVA and we want to make a mold of it. Once the mold is done, we have to clean it up, put it together, paint the bottom and the antislip on the floor and give it back to my friend who is in Brazil until the 1st of June.

After i give the boat back we start seeing how we can make one of these things. i don't want to loose the classic lines, I have always felt like this was the 69 camaro of boats. You just can't change it or it looses the magic. So it has to LOOK the same, but I want to make it lighter, faster, and stronger. We are going to do the hull in all 1708 glass, nice vinylester resin, thick bottom, thin sides. All the top side will be built with the diviniyCell coring. Twin cummins 210hp 6BTs for longevity and gas mileage. Lightweight ZF 65A trannys. I'm thinking of building two fuel tanks (One big tank with a division). front part of the tank will be 80 gallons which we always leave full for day trips, and then the back part we will have 220 gallons so if we want to make a run to the FADS we can fill the whole thing up. We are going for AC, a generator, bed up front, couch on the inside. It'll be fun.

Here's the goal:



Here's another cool one, I'll probably stick with the colors above, but this one really caught my eye! I'm not going to do the wood though.



Cool, well that's what I have for today. Monday and Tuesday are Costa Rican holidays, so we are going to hit it on Wednesday and see if we can get this thing ready to copy!

[meaux fishing]

looking forward to it

[rardoin]

Great boat for a day boat, bullet proof hull lay-up....but plan on an Eisenglass enclosure for the FB or some great foul weather gear as they are a VERY wet ride when running on plane in a decent sea and quartering conditions. That being said they are great for a day charter boat.

[swamp snorkler]

Ready to see you work your magic!

[GringoJohn]

Originally Posted by rardoin

Great boat for a day boat, bullet proof hull lay-up....but plan on an Eisenglass enclosure for the FB or some great foul weather gear as they are a VERY wet ride when running on plane in a decent sea and quartering conditions. That being said they are great for a day charter boat.

That's what I hear. Going to do the full cover for the captain so he doesn't get too wet! That being said, it doesn't get too rough here, so hopefully it won't be that bad.

[GringoJohn]

Just about have everything off we need to get off. I had to take the tower off to move it into a building, so that was alot of work. And we got all the running gear, thru hulls and vents taken off. We'll spend the rest of the day today washing it and then we'll see if our warehouse is ready.

[GringoJohn]

Well, our nice Warehouse fell through. Looks like this is going to be home for the next year. We got the corner of the boat yard. Can't work in the rain, so we are going to have to build something to keep us covered. We start welding tomorrow...

[swamp snorkler]

Well that sucks!

[bobo23]

Man, you've got to build a shop, to build a boat. That's a tough lick. Good luck. Can't wait to see the project.

[Matt G]

Definitely sucks, but it will only add to the story you can tell your sports while they are sliming up the deck!

[Mlab12]

This is awesome! Good Luck!

[GringoJohn]

Ok, so we made a shade to work under, got a really strong night wind, and the roof ripped off and went into the ocean. Not much more to say about that, wasted a week though. So, I moved the boat back to the same place we lightened up the ocean master and made the Quepos 28. I am not sure if we'll build the new boat here, but we will make the mold here for time sake as I am out of time.

So after the fiasco with the roof, we finally finished up the prep on the Bert to take one side. That involved putting on 15 coats of mold release wax and 4 coats of thick PVA. It looked like this when we were done:




And then we put two layers of thick mat and a layer of woven fiberglass on top.











Tomorrow we have a bunch of 3/4 inch plywood. We are going to make birdcages of the side of the boat using 2 by 3's and then cut the plywood to fit the sides of the boat, and then glass in the plywood. This will help the mold to stand up when we are done, and it'll help the mold to get less flexible. After we get the plywood in places, i bought a bunch of 4 inch pvc tubes and we are going to cut them in half, and further make the mold rigid. I was going to wait for that to take pictures, but I'll try to post again tomorrow. Today was alot of work, although it doesn't look like it. It took forever to get the boat balanced on one side like that, with just a few supports on the side we are working on.

Again, the goal is just to get something to work with. I am not able to strip the boat of everything, turn it upside down and pop off a perfect mold, so we are kind of taking pictures of the sides of the boat with this mold, and then we will put the two sides together and then gelcoat the mold and make it look like we did flip the boat. I just want something to work with.

[GringoJohn]

So the glass was dry this morning. We left the woven cloth on the outside, so we don't have to sand as much to stick stuff to in. So we put the two layers of mat on the inside, and once layer of 18oz woven. Let that dry with the mat out. And then today, we are putting some PVC tubes on the outside to keep it straight. These are 4 inch PVC tubes, and we are using bondo with extra cat. like glue. You can catilize the bondo hot and it dries in like 3 minutes. Then we are going to glass these on.

Here's the first tube





Here's the second tube





More pictures to come in a bit.

[Bluechip]

That's one hell of a project.

[Mossive]

this is fun to watch!

[GringoJohn]

This is kind of a mid process shot. We too a string line and found where we want the boat to sit and ran a string and put some 2 by 3's along the bottom to simulate where the bottom of the plywood should be. Then ran a string line to simulate where the sides of the plywood should be, and then took a bunch of small thin boards we made by cutting a 2 by 3 into a bunch of pieces and are making the outline of the boat. We will transfer that onto 1 inch plywood. Then fiberglass the plywood to mold. I don't know how to describe it well, we just got the birdcages finished.

[GringoJohn]

Ok, more progress pictures. We used string, super high tech, but never lies We have it where we can set it upright or tilt it over. And this will make it stiff too!










Here's some better shots of the string.

[GringoJohn]

Well, that's half a boat mold!



So we demolded, and then got a bunch of drums, set the mold on the drums and rolled

it away!











We spent the rest of the day putting on more PVA in the bow and on the bottom.

Tomorrow we start the other side!

[GringoJohn]

They say to make Hay while the sun shines, and it's a bright and sunny day today! We got all the glass cut and one layer on the boat before lunch. We will be done with the mold soon!





We also checked and all the birdcages for the other side look like they will work for this side, so we will not have to do that again, just cut the plywood. We'll make short work of that, we may finish by tomorrow night...we'll see...

[GringoJohn]

Today we didn't get too much done. Don't know, just couldn't get in that groove. We got some of the plywood cut, but I really wanted it all finished today...