Nor-Tech At 35—The Trond Schou Interview, Part II: Favorite Builds

For Nor-Tech Hi-Performance Boats co-founder and chief executive officer Trond Schou, talking about his “favorite builds” of the past 35 years is risky business. The Southwest Florida company has built a lot of boats in the past 35 years. There’s always the chance of leaving out a special build and offending the client who paid for it.

Completed in 2000, the Lady Lisa Roadster model was one of two 80-footers built by the company. Photo by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.

It’s like asking a father of more than 1,000 children to pick his favorites. Any answer is fraught with peril.

But it didn’t stop me from asking that question during our interview last week at Nor-Tech headquarters in Cape Coral. Here’s what he had to say.

You must have a lot of favorite boats. What comes to mind first?

(Laughs) A lot have been unique. But to me, the last 80-footer we did, the Lady Lisa open performance boat in 2000, that was pretty cool, you know. We haven’t built any more since. It was a very costly undertaking to build that boat. (Laughs again) Most companies go under when they do stuff like that. We were struggling, and that probably wasn’t the wisest move from a financial standpoint. But the achievement, to have it on our CV that we built this boat, that was pretty cool. And the boat came out unbelievable.

I think at the time we built that it was the end of an era. If we had built that boat five years prior we may have had a whole different outcome of how many we made.

How about on the catamaran side?

I would say there are three catamarans that would be my “favorite.” One would be the Aqua Doll 50, a turbine boat we built in 2006. The paint job was pretty amazing because it was made to look like on an old Mustang fighter plane, so it had all the rivets in it. It had two Lycoming 55 turbine engines. It was just an incredible boat.

A pair of turbine engines powered the 50-foot Aqua Doll catamaran. Photo courtesy of Nor-Tech.

The other was another 50 called Xtreme Xhibit owned by Jim Leonardo. That was the first quad 1,300-hp Sterling Performance Engines boat and it was amazing. That boat ran over 200 mph, back then. That boat was absolutely sick. Obviously, the 1,300 Sterlings at the time, they didn’t last long before we had to change motors. But when they ran it was amazing. I remember running that boat in a poker run. We lost an engine and it still ran 167 mph.

The last 52 we did for a client in Bahrain and that boat had four (Mercury Racing) 1350 QC4 motors. That boat was unbelievable.

And the closed-deck V-bottoms?

We started with that 50-foot deep-V—that was our first boat in 1991. I remember we came to the Miami International Boat Show and nobody had a boat that big. They were all 38s, those were the “big dogs.” And everyone was like, “What the hell is this thing?” That was memorable.

Then people were asking for a smaller for a smaller boat. A 50-foot boat is too big for a lot of people. So then we did a 38, and that 38 became famous because we actually put it into the offshore racing circuit. So Adib Mastry and Michael Allweiss they were racing it in the Factory II class. Nobody could beat that boat—that boat was unbelievable.

Piloted by Adib Mastry and Michael Allweiss, the 38-foot Mastry Engine Center Nor-Tech dominated the Factory II class. Photo courtesy Michael Allweiss.

We did a lot them. What’s interesting is that a lot of people who bought the 38 went on to buy the 50.

Then we decided to build a smaller version of the 50, which was the 43-footer. We sold a lot of them. We did 40 of those boats for the State Department so that became a real best-seller.

Why did you start with such big boats?

It was kind of a childhood dream to create and build these things. You take a chance and go for it, you? So it’s a lot of sleepless nights and days of no money (Laughs).

How about the ‘specialty’ boats in the Monte Carlo and Flyers line? What stands out?

That 46 Flyer is a pretty amazing boat. We created that retractable top and all that stuff. But it’s based on the 45-foot center console platform. It’s the same running surface. But before that, we did the first Monte Carlo. That was based on the 39-foot center console platform. We did that with inboards—we actually used QC4 1100s motors. That was a cool boat.