heres the pdf of that issue with pics, they have a bunch of back issues on their website.

http://www.proboat-digital.com/proboat/200608/

page 34 Made in Turkey

Professional Boatbuilder feb/mar 2004 has an article about Carolina builders Jarrett Bay, and Sea Island Boatworks, with a sidebar article mentioning Rybovich, Ricky Scarborough, and Mann Custom Boats.

[QUOTEhttp://www.paulmanncustomboats.com/[/QUOTE]

Foam, balsa, wood... now I'm confused. I thought foam coring and vacuum bagging made a stronger-than-wood adhesion - less weight reducing stress.

Looking at Tony Montana's website, his plywood design looks like it would not only take 12' seas, but .50 cal hits at the same time.

a little Coosa, some epoxy and some fairing, it would be as good as new. :lolhit:

From reading over at Yacht Forums there is a manufacturer down the street from Bertram that states that Bertram was buying some cheap ass coring that some guy was trying to sell him over and over that he stated was not worthy of making flower arrangments with.

I tell you it was cool to go around to all the shops back in 95 in the Outerbanks when i was there.One of the guys i worked with was a local and new all the bulders, most of then in old barns or old Wharfs and all with 1 or 2 big 60 to 70 battle wagons being built from a pile of lumber and epoxy and an idea.

Scarborough was built on an old wharf covered by a fish shack. He built some of the prettiest Carolina boats out there.Sonny Briggs was the old man who started the Carolina idea and he built rightside up out in the open field by the bay.There were a few others that started building cold molded and one that was a foam core boat,
I remember Paul saying to me what is the sense in building all that framework for a boat referring to the cold molding process if you are not going to leave it in the boat,
The frames were the strength in all his boats and weighed miniumally.
All the wood epoxy Carolina boats are built out of Juniper. This is a swamp grown white Cedar that is clear of Knots and is almost impervious to rot.But the best feature is it is light like Balsa wood but has the strength of a much heavier material.

tommy monza you're right about NC boys, we leave our boat in Wanchese for the spring and fall at Gwaltney old shop by Spencer and Holton. I'm amazed how they build a boat!

I'm tending to agree the boat stuffed, I fish alongside the charter guys from OI, stay at couples houses sometimes, pretty freindly with some. They run their boat easy and when it's a little snotty going out there they back them down allot!

I understand their charter boats and all the reasons but maybe these boats are just getting too fast and the captains still think they do 19 knots!

My old 52' Hat was a great boat, came off a wave so hard one time bent both tower legs, the boat was 6 months old. Pipewelders did it underwarranty and replaced both legs with larger ones and that boat ran 23-24 kts flat out! They had never seem such a bend before - maybe you're all right too light, too fast and captain thinking it's like an old slow 54' Bertram that was shown in the ads years ago!!!

This was some great reading !

The vast majority of your claims are proven not to be true.
( see the 3rd party published comparative core material table.)

Actually Balsa has vastly greater strength across almost all measurable indexes.

Tensile , compressive, shear, and modulus.

In some measurements its superiority is orders of magnitude. In only a few is it even close.

Im open to learn though...do you have any data independent of your opinion to back up your claims?

I would say the only reason to use foam is weight-or because you dont have the ability to vac bag/Infuse.
A full foam boat yields a severe compromise in strength and a TINY decrease in weight.

This is why even when there is no limit placed on cost- builders (like say Skater) prefer Balsa over all other core materials. ESPECIALLY on running surfaces, tops can be compromised, but if you were to take a jet ski hit against your boat which core material would you pick based on eth chart? Pretty simple choice.

However Balsa MUST be vac bagged or infused to guarantee bonding. This further INCREASES production cost and time to build resulting in a more expensive but superior product.

Uncle Dave

Even if the foam core was not the issue, if the history of the secondary bonds on the tabbing of bulkheads coming undone is an indicator of how welll the hull to deck bond was than there is the beginning of the problem.
The deck is providing 50 percent of the strength of that forward area between the waterline and sheer.If that tabbing had started to fail over a period a hundred hours it most likely went unnoticed unless someone was looking for it.
The captain may have been pushing it a little harder than what he said or maybe it was just coming down into that last wave that finally was the last straw for the hull to deck joint.
Anyways once the hull and deck seperated there was no real support in the forward section of the hull to push tons of water.
The hull than proceeded to cave in like a wet shoebox and the force of the water peeled back the deck.

Game Over.

Now how the transom was ripped clean off is another story.

Buizilla you making new friends over there.

If you look at any Carolina custom built boat they run with a very bow high attitude not flat like the BERTs and other production boats.They do this with very flat deadrise at the stern and a ton of rocker to get that nose up. A nice sharp entry cuts the wave and the high attitude rides over it.No need to have a 15 to 20 degree bottom on a boat that the transom should never be out of the water so what good is the deep v of the production boats doing back there doing other than creating excessive drag.

A Carolina boat is designed with a very sharp entry that makes the inside forward 12 feet of the boat useless as it is to narrow, and than above the chine goes out into an exaggerated flare.The dee sharp entry cuts the wave and the flare gradaully lifts the bow back up if it is being driven down into the wave.Also the Carolina boats surface area between the chine and the sheer is convex and not concave as all the production boats are.Even in the forward heavily flared areas the area between the chine and until it goes into the flare has a convex built into it. This added element doubles the strength of this broad flat area should the boat bury the nose or land hard on it side.

The production builders are mostly fluff and glitz.Their designs are left over from their old mentality of 35 years ago.The only thing that made them tough was shear mass and layer upon layer of fiberglass plowing through the water at 17 knots .Now they have been playing catch up to the custom builders and are trying to match their speeds with their antiquitated design mentality and hi tech construction. and huge amounts of horsepower.