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New owners, Anton Webre and Mike Kucera.
“Hey, you want to buy a marina?”
If that sounds like an unlikely way to launch a business partnership, at least both of the men involved were committed boaters. Mike Kucera had grown up in Wake, close to the foot of the Whitestone Bridge, boating all his life, primarily power boats.
After decades as a commodities trader in New York and New Zealand, Anton Webre was thoroughly disillusioned with Wall Street and what it did to people. A sailor since he was five years old with 40,000 sea miles, his true passion was sailing.
Kucera had been working for the Waterway Guide’sCruising Guidebook for nine years when he heard from a client that Ken Schmalenberger was looking to sell Norton Yachts. He knew it well, the place having been an institution in Deltaville since Ed Norton opened it in 1948 whenHarry Truman was president. The boat building heritage is strong here.
Having always wanted to own a marina, Kucera pitched the idea to Webre who was looking for his next chapter.Both were enthusiastic about the opportunity to put their mark on a multi-faceted marina that not only sold boats— they’re the Virginia and North Carolina dealer for Jeanneau, the largest boat manufacturing group in the world—but was a brokerage, a service center, a storage facility and offered the area’s only ASA-certified sailing school. In 2018, Norton Yachts became theirs.
Its prime location makes it all possible. “Deltaville has around 1,000 full-time residents, 3,000 boats and 15marinas,” Kucera says of the town designated a harbor of safe refuge. “We’re a prime stop on the inter-coastal waterway and we’ve got the most direct access to the channel in the center of the bay.”
That easy access is one reason boaters come to Norton, whether to rent a boat and captain it themselves or take their own boat out. When John Wheatley, a former member of the Royal British Navy, wanted to start sailing again, he began by chartering a Norton boat. Eventually, he bought his own, using Norton Yachts as his agent for the purchase and having them charter it out when he isn’t using it.
“They held my hand throughout and got me a better price,” Wheatley says. “From the managing my boat perspective, they make sure the people chartering it know what they’re doing. As for maintenance, if they don’t do it themselves, they know where to point you to.”
With its long and impeccable reputation, the 71-year old business has a devoted following. “Seventy-five percent of our business is repeat. I can count on one hand the number of people who are single boat owners from Norton,” Kucera explains, clarifying that most are on their second, third or even fifth Norton boat. “It says a lot about the reputationNorton has to have that kind of customer loyalty.”
One of the new owners’ goals for 2019, besides selling more boats, getting more boats into charter and growing the sailing school, is to secure a Federal Boating Infrastructure Grant, which helps marinas update their facilities.
“The government offers these grants because they recognize that marinas play a vital role in recreation and interstate commerce,” Webre explains. They hope to replace all of “B” dock and renovate the restrooms so they’re ADA-complaint. The roofing over part of “C” dock will be removed to allow for those slips to be used for sailboats, but also because covered slips contribute to runoff and prevent light from reaching the creek bottom, an environmental concern.
Their intent also is to grow the business at their Air BnB house, a yellow three bedroom rancher situated on the property which gets rented for everything from day boaters during rockfish season to wedding parties.
If the owners have any complaints with the business, it’s that the county isn’t more welcoming to boaters. “The county’s property tax on boats is a huge challenge for us, even though the Board of Supervisors lowered it,” Webre says, pointing out that Lancaster, Gloucester and Mathews counties have eliminated the boat tax in the last decade. “Much of the debate has centered around the elimination of the tax being a loss for the county when it would actually be a net gain in terms of employment opportunities and increased revenues. We should want to keep boaters in this county because of our prime bay access and some of the very best sailing in the lower bay.”
With customers from San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco and beyond, Norton Yachts caters to those who want to cruise the world’s largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay.
“We may be a tiny town at the end of a paved road,” Kucera says with a smile, “But we’re the boating capital of theChesapeake Bay.”
NortonYachts.com · 804-776-9211