Bertram Rendezvous 2008

Ah, The Gathering of Eagles. This year was my first year at the Rendezvous. I was invited by Mark to attend with him on the Tigress, a 37 Bertram. We left at about 9 AM on Friday from Pt. Pleasant and had slightly sloppy run south to Absecon Inlet into the wind and sea. We didn't make bad time though arriving shortly after noon.

We got the boat and ourselves cleaned up and immediately the drinks from our boat and others started flowing. The Rum Runner was churning out frozen drinks by the dozen for the welcome dock party along with hot and cold hordevours.

We tried to have lunch but the patio bar was very unaccommodating. My being vegetarian sometimes makes for finding a good meal a little difficult. They had hamburgers and cheese burgers along with chicken sandwiches with and without cheese but could not make a grilled cheese. I even tried for a mushroom Swiss burger, hold the burger patty but the waitress could not figure out how to enter that in the computer. I reciprocated with not being able to figure out more than one percent for the tip.

At this point I am thinking, oh great if this is how the rest of the weekend is going to turn out...I am taking car service home now!

Luckily that turned out to be the only real issue of the weekend. We headed back to the boat for more of the usual festivities...more drinks and finger food.

After dinner we headed over to Trump's for a little gambling. It is not one of my favorite casinos and we didn't spend much time there since no one seemed to be winning. Back to the docks for more drinks it was. Do you see a trend happening here???

We had discussed fishing on Saturday the week before but had figured none of us would be up and were uncertain of the weather. As luck would have it Mark, myself, Mike, and Wayne were all up before 6:30 AM and ready for action. We contemplated on heading out over coffee, then breakfast, then beer. At that point we figured it was a little late and settled in for more drinking and finger food. We did hear later there was a pretty good blue fin tuna bite on the AC Ridge-figures. There is always next year.

Pretty much the rest of the weekend was drinking eating, a little gambling here and there and oh did I mention drinking?

We took a look at the new 41 but I was not impressed at all. The salon seemed cramped with the raised floor are for the dinette. This did create a pretty decent size second stateroom though. The cockpit was also a little strange...the gunwales were very wide, about 18" wide. Plus with the higher freeboard of the cockpit you would probably need another 2' on your gaffs in order to be able to reach the fish. For the roughly $900k price tag I was not impressed. Even less impressing was the cruise speed. I did not go for a ride but was told that at 75% it is only about a 20 knot cruise and 26 wide open.

Saturday night's dinner was a pig roast on the rooftop of the patio bar. There was also lobster for an additional fee. I think there were two pigs but not sure as I did not investigate too well. I had a salad, some corn, a $10 Coors Light and headed back to the boat to eat and consume alcohol that was already paid for.

Sunday morning was just spend getting the boat ready for the ride home, breakfast and refueling.

The run home was smooth and downhill despite the 3-5 foot seas. We left around 10:30 AM and arrived home about 1 PM. There was however pea soup fog where visibility at times was maybe 50-75'. About 5 miles offshore visibility increased to about a quarter mile for most of the run North. A few guys ducked into Barnegat, not really sure why. They all complained that you could not see the jetties till between them and that there were dozens of boats all over the place. The fog did clear for them once inside the bay though. We decided to keep running north and go in through Manasquan and deal with the canal again. Once we hit the bathing beach on Island Beach State Park the fog pretty much lifted and all we had left was haze.

Other than the fog the trip down and back was uneventful for us, we did hear on the radio one boat seemed to have blown a head gasket and another boat had and engine shutdown while running but never hear what the outcome of that was. All-in-all it was a great weekend with pretty good weather and good friends. Can't wait for next year.

I should have walked around with the camera more as there would have been some very interesting shots but this is what I ended up with...Bertram Rendezvous 2008 Gallery.