BRINGING A BERTRAM BACK
Andrew Cooley long had it in mind to set up his business as the go to for the restoration of deep-V hulls pioneered by Bertram Yachts in the 1960s. The owner of Cooley Marine Management in Stratford, Connecticut, he mentioned his idea to a good friend, Steve Shaw, who was once Cooley’s boss at Derecktor Shipyards. Shaw connected Cooley with Justin Bass (shown above with his wife, Sandi), who was recently retired and looking to transition from his Tiara 42 into a smaller, classic-looking Bertram. “Justin is gung ho and I’m very gung ho,” Cooley recalls. “We hit it off.”
The two found a Bertram 31—one of the originals, built in
