Back in the early 1990s, the internet was not being widely used and there were no smart phones able to take videos at a moment’s notice and certainly no yachting influencers. Nordhavn was just making a name for itself, and the ability to get across the capabilities and brand lifestyle to a world-wide audience was limited to brochures and boat shows. Still, these could never convey the essence of being aboard a Nordhavn so PAE vice president Jim Leishman bought a camcorder and filmed every sea trial, delivery and launch he could – which were many because at the time, Leishman, Dan Streech and their third partner, Joe Meglen, along with Jim’s brother Jeff, the company’s naval architect, were still flourishing, and so they had their hands in all aspects of PAE: sales, commissioning, payroll, design, and deliveries. This 360-degree approach was one taken by necessity but it would set the tone for the future culture of the company.

“Did the culture create our behavior or the other way around?” Streech wonders after seeing the videos of the young men behaving perhaps a little too spontaneously (grabbing a billfish from the swim platform while underway, boarding a plane to Singapore on two days’ notice to bail out an N62 delivery captain who had second thoughts). “We had a combination of intelligence, ignorance and self confidence that caused us to just jump into things and then figure them out as we went along. It just came naturally.”

It’s not clear whether the footage on the tapes were ever used as the publicity generators Jim Leishman had envisioned. Nordhavn’s website was developed a few years later so perhaps that is what superseded the videos. Nonetheless, a cache of the old VHS cassettes was discovered a few weeks ago and they capture what, back then, was so hard to interpret: the allure of the sea, the camaraderie of the people on board, the performance of the new concept long-range motoryachts. The videos also unintentionally encapsulate sentiments that were doubtfully obvious at the time but loud and clear in a re-watch today, which were the spirit that Leishman and Streech put into their effort; their passion and eagerness to create a successful, seaworthy vessel; the confidence they had in their designs; the ability to ensure a happy and satisfied buyer; and the joy in making it all work. The definition of Nordhavn culture today.

We thought it would be fun to post these captured moments in time from deliveries and sea trials of yore of the Nordhavn 46 and the Nordhavn 62, the only models in the Nordhavn line-up at the time. You may recognize a few of the faces from 30+ years ago (we’re looking at you, project manager Dave Harlow, who was a salesman and commissioning tech at the time these videos were shot; and Pete Eunson, former N40 project manager who retired in 2011 after three decades of service to PAE; and Streech’s teenage son, Trevor (who now is a vendor of Nordhavn running his own steel fabrication company). The boats on film are way less technical, way less “tricked out”, and a little less polished, from what you see of the semi-custom Nordhavns coming out of the factories today. In a way, you could say that about those ‘90s crews behind the helm, too, whose successors are a cultivated group of 30- and 40-something wizards who now manage the modern Nordhavns.

But, the more things change, the more they stay the same.