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The cofounder of Nordhavn has cruised all over the world, yet his favorite destination is but 26 miles from his company's home.
By Matt Trulio — Spring 2006
Jim Leishman doesn't offend easily. You could probably say something nasty and vicious about the Nordhavn yachts that his company, Pacific Asian Enterprises (PAE), builds, and the laid-back Southern Californian would smile and say you're entitled to your opinion. You could disparage Asian yachtbuilding in general, and most likely he'd just politely disagree.
But take a shot at cruising off his home coast, and Leishman, who has circumnavigated the globe, will blister. "I hear people say, 'Cruising off California, what a joke,' as if it's some crummy destination," the 50-year-old says. "Well, I've spent some time on Chesapeake Bay, and it's nice, but there's one constant view, one line of trees, and the flies will eat you alive. But the beauty of Catalina Island, with its cliffs and kelp beds-it really is spectacular."
Leishman admits he's a little biased. PAE is headquartered in Dana Point, California, less than 30 miles from Catalina Island, and he was raised in the area. His parents owned sailboats, and he grew up cruising on local waters, eventually completing the Trans-Pac, California-to-Hawaii event-twice.
After graduating from high school and making what he describes as "a half-hearted attempt" at junior college, Leishman started a sailboat brokerage firm. In 1974, he started Pacific Asian Enterprises with his partner, Dan Streech, and they began building Al Mason-designed sailboats in Taiwan. By the mid-1980s, PAE had built a line of cruising sailboats from 33 to 63 feet long.
But the sailboat market was dwindling. So Leishman's younger brother, Jeff, joined the company and helped redesign its offerings, and that initially boosted sales. Still, overall demand steadily decreased. "We would go to the Annapolis Boat Show every year, and the sailboat section would get smaller," Leishman recalls. "The cruising sailboat phenomenon of the 1970s was in decline."
For one show, PAE built a Mason 63, basically a motorsailor. Leishman and his partner had the boat for a year-and-a-half before it sold, and that convinced them that motoryachts with long-range cruising ability were the company's future. Nordhavn, which means "North Harbor" in Norwegian (Leishman is of Norwegian descent), was born in the form of the company's first motoryacht, a 46-footer.
"It just hit me with the Mason how great it was to be able to motor in comfort," Leishman says. "At the same time, we were looking at our customers, people who were retiring and could afford to buy a new boat, but for the most part didn't have a lifetime of sailing experience to call on. For too many of them, cruising on a sailboat was just too much work. Furling gear would jam, sheets would fly around, and they come to the realization that what they were doing was not what they had anticipated. Then they'd sell their sailboat and move on to a motorboat."
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