Professional BoatBuilder - February-March 2018

32 PROFESSIONAL BOATBUILDER

team.  is place is open seven days a

week and some days 24/7. It’s cooler in

the evenings.”  at said, wiring kits are

made up in-house, as is canvas. Cabi-

netry is outsourced, though  nish-

work and some trim can be done in-

house. Truslow said he prefers to out-

source as much as possible but is not

wedded to one position or the other;

his goal is to produce the best boat

possible.

“ ere are 10,000 Bertram owners

out there who love them beyond any-

thing. How do we stay connected to

the grassroots? We have to embrace

all the Bertram owners who might

want to refurb.”

About the Author: Dan Spurr is Pro-

fessional BoatBuilder’s editor-at-large.

building hall), and rather than hire

more, Truslow relies on subbing much

of the work to outside contractors.

“Cummins, Cat, Detroit Diesel, they’re

all here,” he said. “We can get help on

anything. We can bring in 30 people

tomorrow through this extended

coast the only other alternative is in

Alabama. He feels like he’s got a corner

on big-yacht service work, and already

is picking up over ow from Fort Lau-

derdale’s Marine Center.

Bertram Yacht Services has  ve full-

time sta (there are 50 in the main

R

ichard “Dick” Bertram was a sailor, crewing on the

12-Meter Vim in the 1958 America’s Cup trials o

Newport, Rhode Island. He noticed the 23' (7m) tender

to competitor Easterner, both designed by Ray Hunt,

 ashing through 6' (1.8m) waves. Later he asked Hunt

about the design, the now-famous deep-V, with 24° con-

stant deadrise. A wooden 31' (9.4m) version was built by

Russ Specht and a crew of expatriate Cubans and entered

in the 1960 Miami–Nassau Race, which Bertram (and

crew of Sam Gri th and Carleton Mitchell) won so hand-

ily that he was convinced he should form a production

boat company based on Hunt’s deep-V concept.

 e  rst  berglass Bertram 31, built in a small shop in

Hialeah, Florida, was launched the next year, 1961, and the

company promptly sold to the Nautec Corp. Sales were

strong, and the model line expanded with 20', 25' and 38'

(6m, 7.6m, and 11.6m) iterations, manufactured in a new

110,000-sq- (10,230m^2 ) plant near the Miami airport. In

1968 Nautec sold Bertram to the Whitaker Corp., which

had also acquired Columbia Yachts.  e following year,

Francesco Cosentino won  e Naples Trophy in White

Tornado, featured in PBB No. 162. A er a hiatus, the Ber-

tram factory race team was relaunched with Sammy James

and astronaut Gordon Cooper winning the Jockey Club

Sea Talk Race in a Bertram 38. Among many other victo-

ries, Rocky Aoki, owner of the Benihana restaurants, won

Japan’s Atami Ocean Cup in the Bertram 38 Benihana.

In 1984 Whitaker merged Bertram with its other brand,

Trojan, and sold 45% of the business to an investment

group. New models were continually tooled and brought

to market. A 72' (22m) sport sherman was developed by

1987, the same year the investment group bought the

remaining shares from Whi taker; it was about to issue an

initial public o ering when the stock market crashed on

October 19. Two years later, with 1,000 employees on the

payroll and $90 million in sales, the brand was sold to

another investment company, G.L. Ohrstrom & Co.

 e Federal Luxury Tax of 1991 cost 500 Bertram

employees their jobs, and a year later Bertram-Trojan Inc.

 led for bankruptcy. Aqua Buoy bought the Trojan assets,

and the Italian  rm Gruppo Varasi bought Bertram. It

started over with just 30 employees.

In 1997 Bertram was sold to Tekne-

comp SpA, which a year later sold it to

Ferretti, owner of Riva, Pershing, and

several other Italian yacht brands.

And in 2015, as reported here, Ferretti

sold Bertram to the Gavio Group,

where it presently resides.

—D.S.

Peter Truslow stands before a fabric building erect ed for repair and re t projects; this

one is curtained off for a paint job.

Brief History of Bertram

BUILDER PROFILE: Bertram

Bertram171-ADFinal.indd 32 1/2/18 2:23 PM