Business - Business News

POSTED: Monday, Nov. 30, 2009

Norstar staying busy with yacht, boat building

Each week The Bellingham Herald takes a closer look at a business or a construction project. This week: Norstar Yachts Inc.

What it is: Norstar Yachts builds 30-foot and 36-foot luxury power boats as well as 40-foot, 44-foot and 46-foot sailing yachts. Each boat is tailored to its owner's specific needs, said Steve Nordtvedt, who works in sales and marketing.

Norstar has been building power boats since 1995 and only started building sailboats about nine months ago, Steve Nordtvedt said. He said the company decided to build sailboats when they became concerned that the skyrocketing price of diesel fuel would cut into their power boat business. Norstar's 40-foot yacht will be introduced to the boating public in January 2010 at the Seattle Boat Show.

Ownership: Gary Nordtvedt

Employees: 6

What's new: Norstar recently completed a 40-foot sailing yacht for Bellingham residents Carl and Karol Weston. The Westons named the yacht Sea Escape and, when the weather gets better, they plan to sail it around the San Juan Islands and up to Alaska, Carl Weston said.

Weston worked as the production manager for Nordic Yachts in 1977 before he bought Joe's Garden in 1983. Weston said it had been more than 25 years since he and wife went sailing.

"We really enjoyed it and wanted to get back out," Karol Weston said. "We never got tired of it. It's so gorgeous out on the water."

How it started: Norstar Yachts is not the first boat building business Gary Nordtvedt has owned. In 1977 he founded Nordic Yachts, but that company went out of business in 1991 as a result of the federal government imposed luxury tax on yachts, Steve Nordtvedt said.

A 10 percent luxury tax was imposed on yachts more expensive than $100,000 in 1991 by the first Bush administration, according to a Nov. 11, 2004 article in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The tax hurt business for a number of boat building companies and was rescinded three years later. Nordtvedt founded Norstar in 1995.

His brother, Steve, said the reason Gary decided to start a new boat business was simple: "It's in the blood. Once you're in the boat business you can never get out."

Travelling the world: The sail boats designed by Norstar, and the previous business Nordic, are built for world cruising. One sailboat owner, who lives in Chicago, purchased his boat in 1991 and has logged about 110,000 nautical miles, Nordtvedt said. He is currently sailing in the South Pacific and is working on completing his second circumnavigation of the globe, he said.

Norstar Yachts Inc.

1366 Roy Road

Bellingham

671-3669

norstaryachts.com