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Brothers Take Flats Boat To Bermuda

By FRANK SARGEANT

Published: Jul 13, 2007

Pretty much everybody told Ralph Brown he was crazy when he decided to run a flats boat to Bermuda.

The one-way distance out of North Carolina is 700 miles. And Brown's boat, an Intruder 21 that the Spring Hill resident built with his own hands at his company boat works in Hudson, looks a lot more like a Texas flats scooter than an offshore boat.

The freeboard, the distance between the waterline and the gunwales, was measured in inches rather than feet. The boat had virtually no vee in the bottom, usually a necessity to soften rough waves.

"It's basically a boat built for water six inches deep," says Brown. "That's why I came up with the design, because I got tired of hitting bottom in other flats boats that drew too much water, so we built this one to stay clear, no matter how shallow you run."

However, he quickly found the flats boat business is a bit overpopulated these days, and getting dealers and customers to take note of his product was going to take what he calls "making a statement."

The statement Brown came up with, everybody agrees, was just one step short of suicide.

"I knew I had an unsinkable boat, like a surfboard. So all I had to do was get enough gas on it and keep it upright and I could go just about anywhere in it."

The target, he decided, would be Bermuda - a whole lot more impressive than running to even the most remote parts of the Bahamas, because it's all open Atlantic.

Getting somebody to go along proved somewhat problematic. The guy who had agreed to do it backed out three days before. Brown called up his brother, Bob, and asked if he wanted to go for a boat ride.

"Bob agreed, but I don't think he actually knew where Bermuda was when he said OK," laughs Brown. "When he found out he was going to be away 10 days, he was a little shell-shocked - and so was his wife."

Thought He'd Change His Mind

Bob Brown later told his brother the only reason he agreed to go along was he was virtually certain Ralph would come to his senses as soon as they got a few miles outside the inlet, turn around and head home.

"That never crossed my mind," said Ralph. "When we went, we went all the way."

With no chase boat, everything depended on their being self-contained. They carried 300 gallons of fuel, most of it in tanks strapped to the decks, to feed the 115-horse Suzuki outboard. They had a smaller outboard as a backup, but with only six horses available, coming home would take a long time if the big motor failed.

They carried food and water for six days, though the expected crossing time was to be a little more than two days. They had two GPS systems for navigation, a compass, satellite phone and an emergency radio beacon, along with survival suits, an air mattress for naps and a sailcloth cuddy to provide a bit of spray protection.

The heavily laden boat had barely six inches of freeboard when they left the harbor at Atlantic Beach, N.C., on April 30. Fortunately, seas were calm until they had burned off some of the fuel, decreasing weight and increasing the freeboard.

"We kept it at about 16 knots, running 4,000 rpms so we got the most range from our fuel," said Brown. "We started to run through some four- to six-footers around the halfway point, but we had three-inch scuppers in the boat so any spray that came in ran right back out."

For 51 hours, they ran eastward, until at last the island rose out of the sea.

"That was a nice feeling, to see that we were in range, we were going to pull it off," said Brown.

Enjoyed A Hero's Welcome

They checked through customs and enjoyed a hero's welcome in Bermuda. After a few days waiting out passing storms, they refueled, restocked their food and water, checked out the outboard, and headed back to the states. Their destination - New York harbor.

"I figured if we pulled in there by the Statue of Liberty, what better statement could we make about the small business guy, American ingenuity, and the durability of the boat," said Brown.

The return hit heavy rain in the second day, but Brown was so tired from the relentless driving that he lay down on the air mattress in his rain gear and slept.

"When I woke up, there were porpoises and pilot whales all around us, and the sea was calm," said Brown. "It was one of the nicest moments of the trip."

The towers of New York City guided the last miles of their return trip, which took a total of 53 hours. They did a victory lap around the Statue of Liberty - and promptly got a ticket from a park service ranger for boating too close to the icon.

"I kept that ticket and framed it," says Brown. "It was a great memento."

For most boaters, the round-trip run, a total of more than 1,500 miles, would have been plenty of boating adventure for a lifetime. For Brown, it only whetted his appetite.

"I'm going to build a 72-foot catamaran, and we're going to set a speed record for running it around the world," says Brown.

To learn more about Ralph Brown and his voyage, visit www.dreamboats.net.