Bermuda Via Flats Boat

By Bob Brown

On April 30th of this year, local brothers Ralph and Bob Brown drove a 21-foot, 115-horsepower Suzuki-engine flats boat 1,547 miles to Bermuda and back, earning them the record for the longest oceanic crossing in an unassisted flats boat. This is their story, as told by Bob.

On Thursday night, April 25, 2007, I was still working when my brother Ralph called and talked to Jill, my wife. He wanted me to go on a boat trip with him to Bermuda, apparently. When I returned his call the next morning, I told him it was out of the question. “I have to work,” I said. “I have a family to support.”
For a while, Ralph had been planning to take one of his specially-designed “Intruders” to Bermuda and back as some kind of a publicity stunt. He claimed his was the world’s most seaworthy flats boat. A flats boat by definition is a low-profile, open fishing, single-engine craft that can operate in less than one foot of water. Ralph claimed his could run in about four inches.

Two days before the departure date, his first mate backed out. Ralph had already invested several thousand dollars in this trip and couldn’t do it alone. He offered to pay me more than a weeks pay to go. There went my excuse.

Ralph trailered his own “Intruder” from Hudson, near Tampa, and picked me up in Georgia. He planned to take it from Atlantic Beach, NC to Bermuda and then back to New York. Thinking it was only a hundred miles or so offshore, I was gung ho. While waiting for Ralph in Georgia, I looked at our proposed path. My friends, Vince and Chuck and I had a great laugh when I realized how far away it actually was. My brother is absolutely crazy. I’d told my friends that if it appeared to be unsafe I was going to veto the trip. Plus, I thought he would come to his senses and turn back when we hit the bigger waves of the Gulf Stream. But I wasn’t going to tell him that.

When we finally got to the hotel, he had me up half the night making last minute preparations and shopping. While getting ready for bed I watched a little bit of “the Deadliest Catch” and felt a few butterflies. I started asking questions about the boat. Ralph said it was made of hand-laid biaxle fiberglass and in some areas of the boat there were as many as twelve layers. It had built in stringers and ribs. Ralph explained how he spent hours sitting under the boat deciding where to put the spray rails, which I knew gave the boat more rigidity. Additionally, foam injected into the hull made it a solid, unsinkable boat. I felt a little more comfortable knowing that.

The next morning, April 30th, while fueling the boat with 288 gallons of gas in Atlantic Beach, we soon discovered a small crowd of spectators laughing and shaking their heads. Half of them were experienced captains. “No way that boat is going through the Gulf Stream, let alone all the way to Bermuda!” one said.
We departed from boat ramp at the Palms Hotel. The mayor and city manager were our official witnesses and followed in Mike Webb’s much larger boat. A few miles out they turned around to leave us on our own. We were on our way! Though the surf was still relatively small, we hadn’t got past the barrier islands, so I was still a bit skeptical.

After losing sight of land we saw a tall sailboat several miles away and a large school of dolphin. Later, I saw a large spray of water in the air which I assumed was a whale. Then it happened: we hit the first of the big waves.

As soon as we went over our first six footer, I understood why Ralph was so confident in his boat. It was nothing. I was actually having fun going over these waves. The rest of the trip to Bermuda, we had four to six foot seas with an occasional six to eight footer. By the next afternoon, we had burned up half our gas and the boat was much lighter. We were actually seeking out bigger waves to surf down. We didn’t want to burn our fuel too fast, so we ran at 4,200 rpms. With the power prop we could run anywhere from 13 to 28 miles per hour depending on our weight and the waves.

One by one the tanks ran dry and Bermuda was still a long way off. I remembered everyone at the gas station laughing at us and claiming we didn’t have enough fuel. But the reality was that we’d gone halfway and used up half the gas. It was obvious that the boat was getting better fuel economy, as it was nearly a thousand pounds lighter.

We traded off driving and sleeping. A few flying fish landed in the boat, as well as several squid. Each of us saw a whale while the other was sleeping. Ralph had a satellite phone and we kept stopping for him to make phone calls looking for investors for his boat company and informing many people of our location.
We finally arrived in Bermuda some 51 hours later on May 2nd, guided in by Bermuda Harbor Radio as if we were a gigantic tanker. The commotion began upon our arrival at the customs office. People came from all everywhere to see our bright yellow Intruder. No one could believe we made the crossing.
By the next day, word of our journey had traveled all over the island. An article appeared in the paper the next morning built entirely on information taken from Ralph’s website and the official opinion of the Bermudian Government –- namely, that the boat was too small and the ocean too unforgiving for the journey to see completion. Ralph flew back to Florida to take care of a few things while I hung out on the island getting ready for the trip back. We left a day after his return at 9:30 a.m. on May 9th with an additional 50 gallons of gas.

About 70 miles outside of Bermuda, our Suzuki 115’s oil light started flashing. We shut it down and cast out our sea anchor, pulled off the cowling and checked the oil, which we had just changed in Bermuda. It was full. Ralph called his mechanic to check the engine manual. He explained to us how to re-code the computer which wasn’t functioning properly. Once it had been successfully re-coded, that engine ran like a charm. We even joked about making commercials for Suzuki, wondering if they’d help pay for the trip.
Every four hours we stopped and called the Bermuda Harbor Radio to give them our coordinates and allow them to ask us a series of questions to determine our mental state. They were also relaying their information to the U.S. Coast Guard who were also on hand should anything go wrong. It’s scary to know that you’re crossing the ocean in a boat too small for radar to follow.

It was cold at night and we couldn’t see anything because the clouds were blocking out the light from the stars and moon. But we just drove on, guided only by our compass and GPS. We were shooting through four to six footers totally blind, yet the Intruder performed flawlessly.

On the second day, we saw a few isolated fins in the water, and spooked something very large near our boat. The waves were a choppy three to feet with a 15 to 25 mph wind. We drove right into a storm, and really had no choice as storms were all around us. When the storm dissipated, the waves turned glassy and it grew colder and colder as the night wore on. We simply couldn’t wait for the sun to pop out. When at last it did, it shone for less than five minutes and sunk back behind a huge wall of very wet fog.

Once it cleared, we saw a pod of whales about 60 yards away. When we chugged over to get a closer look, they disappeared, but another pod of about 40 pilot whales took their place. A handful came over to play in our wake. They looked lime green underwater, but when they surfaced, they were dirty white and grayish black. They stayed with us for about three minutes, and then went on their way.

As drew closer to New York we began to see more and more floating trash, which we assumed came from cruise ships. When we arrived in New York Harbor May 11th we had to dodge floating logs. It was a great feeling looking straight up underneath the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty appeared much larger from our tiny boat.

We spent about 20 to 30 minutes driving around Liberty State Park looking for the boat ramps. Then we got our greeting. The Park Police Boat showed up. Ralph got his government witness he needed for the record books -- they wrote him a $75 ticket. We made it back with about 35 gallons to spare, in about 53 hours. In Bermuda, we were treated like heroes. Once back in America, we received a different kind of welcome.

On June 2nd, Ralph called to tell me that we officially hold the title for the longest oceanic crossing in an unassisted flats boat from the World Record Academy.

The official blog of the journey and some video can be found at www.dreamboats.net. Ralph Brown can be reached at (727) 861-1550 or via email at Ralph@dreamboats.net