Oakland, CA: 28 ft Bertram Gone in One Morning

This 28 ft Bertram 28 sportfisher had been sitting low for a while, twin engines dead and the cockpit sole gone soft underfoot before it finally settled hard. Fiberglass hulls like this one don't announce the problem until the deck starts giving, and by the time we got the call it had taken on enough water that nobody was pulling it out with a hand crank. No trailer meant no easy hookup, so this was a straight salvage recovery, working the hull off its resting spot with slings and a winch truck staged as close as Alameda County access allowed. The soft cockpit sole was the real obstacle, since stepping wrong meant going through the deck, so the crew rigged from outside the hull rather than walking it. Getting the Bertram stable and onto the truck took most of a morning. There was no title in the drawer, handled per the California page rules, nothing unusual for a boat that had been abandoned that long. Once it was loaded, we ran it toward Hayward and on to the processor, where the hull got cut down for scrap. Twin engines that dead and a deck that far gone meant there was nothing left worth saving. Crews cover all of Alameda County: Fremont, Hayward, Berkeley, San Leandro, Livermore, Pleasanton. A 28 ft Bertram is a heavy hull, and I've hauled plenty out of Oakland driveways and yards where the boat got parked years ago before a move to storage that never happened. We schedule same-week pickups, and I plan the route around narrow side streets and low branches before the trailer ever leaves the yard.