N O R D H AV N Quality
Passion and pride A passion for passagemaking and pride in product drive everyone and everything at PAE
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he trademark may be Nordhavn but the hallmark at Pacific Asian Enterprises is passion, pure and simple. It’s a never-ending enthusiasm for passagemaking that propels PAE in all its endeavors. The three founders of the company wouldn’t have it any other way. Indeed, they do not know of any other way to run the company. They each caught the boating bug at an early age in their native Southern California. Joe Meglen, when he was 15, wanted to sail and he wanted his own boat. No problem. The teen built himself a Sabot-like pram in the garage and, literally, with a sailing manual in hand, taught himself to sail in Newport Harbor. When Dan Streech was 10, his father, an inveterate tinkerer, built him a small outboard-powered boat. As a teen, he had powerboats of his own, but when he read Eric Hiscock’s Voyaging Under Sail while in college, sailing took over his life. Dan convinced his parents to quit their jobs, sell their home and buy an old yawl which the parents, two sisters and he cruised from California to the Caribbean. During his high school years, Jim 108 · CIRCUMNAVIGATOR 2003
Leishman would have spent far more time at the marina than in class were it not for parental control. He took any job he could find down on the docks in Dana Point, and jumped at every opportunity to go sailing. Before he graduated, Jim had already crewed to Hawaii in a TransPac race. It was in 1973, while working after school at Kettenberg Marine in Dana Point, that Jim met Dan when the latter joined Kettenberg as a yacht broker. Dan had met Joe one year earlier when he sold a Newporter 40 ketch to Joe’s parents. In 1974, Dan opened Dan Streech Yacht Sales and within months, Jim, and then, Joe, joined him as yacht brokers. The die was cast. In 1975, Dan Streech Yacht Sales became the U.S. representative for yachts built by two Taiwan builders, and, over the next five years, the trio would import and deliver more than 50 cruising sailboats, mainly CTs and Transpac 49s. In 1977, Dan, Jim and Joe formed a partnership to design and build their own line of cruising sailboats, with the first model designed by legendary Al Mason. Pacific Asian Enterprises was incorporated a year later, followed by Lemest
Three decades ago, the faces look younger and the hair longer: Jim Leishman prepares to varnish a wheel for a customer (upper left), Joe Meglen inspects a boat with the builder in Taiwan, and Dan Streech, a few years before the three met, prepares to cruise to the Caribbean aboard the yawl Malabar IV with his parents and sisters.
Yacht Sales, a brokerage, the following year. The name Lemest is derived from the first two letters of the surnames of the founding partners. The first Mason 43 was launched in June, 1979. Six years later, Chablis, Hull #2 of the 53-foot model, became the first Mason to circumnavigate the world. More than 300 Masons were built by PAE, with many completing ambitious ocean voyages and circumnavigations. During the growth and success of PAE during the Mason years, the three partners kept their focus on development and design of oceangoing yachts, leaving the company free to choose and supervise the best