The Yachtsmen
Complete yachtsmen — under sail and under power.
Dick Bertram and C. Raymond Hunt are remembered for re-inventing the offshore powerboat, but that was only half the story. Both men were accomplished yachtsmen across the full spectrum of the sport — racing at America's Cup level under sail, drawing championship sailboats, and applying that same eye to power. The deep-V wasn't the work of powerboat specialists. It came out of two complete yachtsmen who simply knew boats.
Richard "Dick" Bertram
Founder, Bertram Yacht (1916 – 2000)
A Miami yacht broker with Merrill-Stevens, Bertram raced at the very top of the sailing world long before he was a builder — he crewed aboard the 12-Metre Vim during the 1958 America's Cup defender trials, one of the most intensely fought campaigns in Cup history. At the 1958 New York Boat Show he watched Ray Hunt run a deep-V prototype in driving snow, ordered one on the spot, and named her Moppie after his wife. In 1960 he took that 31-footer down to the Miami-Nassau Race and won it in seas that drove larger, more conventional boats out of the contest. Bertram Yacht was founded the next year.
C. Raymond Hunt
Designer (1908 – 1978)
Hunt drew championship sailboats and powerboats with equal authority. He designed the International 110 (1939) and 210 one-design sailboats — fleets that still race today — and drew the Concordia yawl, one of the most admired auxiliary sailboats ever built. He campaigned the 12-Metre Easterner he designed during the 1958 America's Cup defender trials against Bertram's Vim. The deep-V planing hull, proven in Moppie at Miami-Nassau, then redefined every offshore powerboat that came after it — including the original Boston Whaler, which he also designed.
