In order to be happy, no matter how practical people are, they need more than just money and social status. Andrei Rochianu can tell anyone that the engine that put him in motion all his life was the need to create. He graduated from the Naval Academy in Constanta and he has worked ever since as an officer in the commercial Navy. “It’s pretty nice work but if fails to provide the satisfaction that comes from a thing you make yourself. The only thing you have to do is obey a few rules and do what your superiors tell you to. I wanted to do something by myself so I opened a shoes and gear factory. I made luggage items and I sold them in luxury stores on Calea Victoriei. I was rather successful but I did not feel fulfilled. I was given the opportunity to build the first Romanian yacht.”
A few years ago, Andrei Rochianu met a family willing to try the building of such a boat here and they convinced an American foundation to support the project. Then he created a company and started building the boat. The project head was Andrei Rochianu. The building took two years and Andrei Rochianu worked with ten people. “It is a classic yacht, built from wooden fibre, compressed and laminated, which gives it great resistance. The costs were just under $120,000 and the market price is somewhere around $300,000. The value of a boat is strictly related to the number of working hours put into it. For a small boat like this one – 10 metres long and weighing 7 tonnes – the usual value is over 7,000 working hours but when it comes to lamination, the duration is longer.” The yacht project was made by one of the most famous designers in the world. The yacht was finally finished.
Now Andrei Rochianu plans to start his own shipyard and is surfing the Internet for partners and potential customers. “The costs are lower here and it could be a flourishing business. Although the prices vary, a yacht built here, where the materials and the labour force are cheaper, could be sold overseas for twice the price. And the quality of a boat built here is better because in a big shipyard people do not have the same care for small details.” Andrei Rochianu told us what a yacht could mean to somebody who can afford it: “an instrument of dreams. The great Western industrialists caught in the rough world of entertainment have no time to enjoy it. But in the middle of the madness they can all dream that one day they will.”