Donald Porter—A ‘Nor-Tech Brother’ Remembered
A little less than a year ago, Peter Roberts of Double R Performance, a full-service Nor-Tech Hi-Performance Boats dealer outside of Toronto, Canada, woke me with one of his typical early morning phone calls. Time zones don’t matter much to Roberts, who co-owns the dealership with his brother, Raymond, and as a longtime friend he knows they don’t matter much to me, either.
But I knew Roberts was particularly amped to chat when he skipped his usual dad-joke opener and got straight to the point. He had recently delivered a new Nor-Tech 340 Sport center console powered by four Mercury Marine Verado 300 outboards to performance-boat enthusiast and fellow Canadian Donald Porter.
Off and on the water, Donald Porter was a Double R Performance favorite.
“You’ve got to talk this guy,” Roberts told me. “You won’t regret it. He’s a hoot and a half.”
So I called him. And a hoot and half, maybe even a hoot and three-quarters, he was.
Like the Roberts brothers, Porter grew up in the small Toronto-adjacent town of Orillia. He had just come off owning a 36-foot Nor-Tech catamaran powered by pair of Mercury Racing 700 SCi sterndrive engines when he bought the 34-foot center console. He loved the cat, but found that it required every bit of his attention to drive and piloting it was becoming less fun as he grew older.
“The center console is like a pontoon-boat for a man who hasn’t given up on life,” he told me, then laughed. “Running the catamaran was a job. Running this one is just fun.”
Porter went from a 36-foot catamaran to this 34-foot center console without missing a beat.
I laughed as well. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard such a story about the transition from a dedicated go-fast boat to a performance-oriented center console. Focused on that transition, the article about Porter and his new ride went live a few days later and he called to thank me.
That turned out to be the last time we would speak. Porter, who was just 60 years old, died this week from brain cancer.
Roberts reached out yesterday to give me the news.
“We lost a real Nor-Tech brother last night,” he said. “Donnie lived on the water and always wanted to be on it. He had several vintage wet bikes—he was the only guy I ever knew who did— a 42-foot Sea-Ray with a diesel engine and a little Pachanga with a 525. But then he got his first Nor-Tech, the 36-foot cat with 700s. Donnie absolutely loved that boat.
Among Porter’s early boats was a Sea-Ray Pachanga powered by a Mercury Racing 525 EFI engine.
“His only mistake was showing up at a house party where I happened to be one night,’ he added, then laughed. “He didn’t know it, but two hours later he was going to own a 34 Nor-Tech with quad 300 and Raymond and I were going to own his cat. We laughed about that afterwards. And that was a great boat for him, too. He drove around with a big Nor-Tech sticker in the back window of his truck with his own caption that read, ‘Life is too short to drive a slow boat.’”
Porter and the Roberts brother became good friends, so much so that they once loaned him a Mustang GT500, which he promptly wrecked.
“Donnie showed up a few days later with a check to buy the car,” said Roberts. “He was a stand-up guy.”
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