Arthur always knows which way the wind is blowing. That’s how you recognize a real yachtman. Even if you wake him up in the middle of the night, especially if you wake him up in the middle of the night, he will tell you what force is on the burst. To feel the boat not by looking at the navigation instruments but by listening to the sounds, watching the birds and the clouds, being in close contact with the world of the sea, this is what it means to be a sailor and above all, this is what it means to be a sailor.
Arthur Sahaghian fully appropriated this rare spirit of yachting, there were few years of his life when he was not around a boat. I noticed in him that he is understanding with any boat, he tolerates its hiccups or weaknesses but he looks harshly at the one who thinks he is the ace at the helm, but he is mediocre, aware more than anyone that the sea does not tolerate impostors and that this game can be very dangerous.
How did you approach the boats for the first time?
“The beginning was somewhere in the second grade when I enrolled in the model ship circle. My father wanted me to do electronics, but my luck was that the electronics teacher was clumsy and he drilled my thumb with a 2 mm spiral, so I didn’t go any further and ended up with model ships.”
What year are we talking about?
“In 74 to 75. About two years of work and disappointment passed like this because I had not obtained a remote control for my model, the remote control thing was very strict during the Ceausescu period. We dismantled Chinese toys and took the ectromotors we used along with the famous 4.5 volt square battery that you tried with your tongue.
The axial line? A pen lead. Propeller? I cut it by hand from a tablet. The following year I participated in an exhibition where seniors of model sailing came and that was a defining thing for me.
At one point I made a model of Columbus’ largest caravel, Santa Maria.
It was a faithful replica and it was functional, it floated and did not tip over. Once I was in the Theater Park in the fountain pool and some boys took my model to the target with stones and sastanas, they submerged it.
Sometime after that, I used to walk to the shore of the small canopy and watch the people who practiced rowing there. The coach there said that I don’t have long enough hands for kayaking but asked me if I wanted to go skiffing. I said yes, sure.
Make your own boat or think again!
He came to me with a handful of copper nails, a hammer and some paint, showed me some old wooden boats made in Reghin and told me to repair one. My father also helped me, who also repaired the motors of the boats, being a mechanic.
When I got there, I look like a kangaroo, with big legs developed from cycling, but with small shoulders and hands.
After three years of rowing, things changed, I developed in the upper part as well. Many times, as training, we take in tow the yachting people, the optimists who were left without wind.
I was in the seventh grade when I got involved in a controversy with one of the yachting boys about whether I could go on his boat and he could go on mine.
When he climbed on the skiff, he immediately overturned, but I, having the luck of a stern wind at the start, did very well on his optimist, having the exercise of balance very well formed.
When the yachting coach saw it, he told me to come yachting the next day. That was in ’81, then I quickly climbed two steps, from optimistic to Cadet.
At that time the whole fleet was like this: wooden boats with linen sails. We used to wet the sails to be more watertight but they were deformed.
Higher than the Cadet, we had a Snipe at base, with dacron sails and an aluminum mast.”
How did you continue?
“Then I entered high school and being very demanding, mathematics-computer science, it didn’t leave me time for anything else and I gave up yachting. But I didn’t find myself in that high school and in the second grade I went to Navrom High School.
I had very good results in high school, as proof I was also assigned to the fleet when I finished, but I was part of a very large generation. In the first step had reached the grades from the ninth to the letter U. That is, the ninth U.
All of them wanted to go to the Marine Institute. At Navrom High School, during sports classes, we had nautical activities: swimming, rowing, yachting. Then yachting appears again in my life in the army.
Because of the very high competition but also the fact that they changed the admission exam procedure in the Marine Institute, I failed. Immediately afterwards I received an order to conscript and they took me into the army in Sulina.
You had to do the army in a different county than the one you lived in. As a result, all kinds of individuals from all over the country who had nothing to do with the water had come to the 2145 Military Unit in Constanta, some of them did not even know how to swim. The commander of the unit asked for a dispensation so that he could bring capable people.
An order was given and those who wanted to register were subjected to a test and tests, medical examination, etc. That’s how I ended up in this unit and after six months of training I went from combat divers to deep-sea divers and I was assigned to the oceanographic vessel Grigore Antipa.
In the second year of the army, because the Navy was two years old, the Spartachiade was organized, among other things, in the yachting discipline.
A captain came and asked which of us had been yachting. I raised my hand, he put me on the boat to see what I knew and took me into his group.
As boats we had Stars with the rigs made by Nea Nicu Calcan and the hulls made by Jacoppo, that is, Iacob Frențescu. They were weighted boats, you were no longer afraid of capsizing.
After training and after the first competition, I already felt that I had been promoted to the ship’s elite because I spent more time with the officers than with the soldiers.
All this lasted until, through a blunder of the communist system, I was detached together with a group of divers to the canal where work accidents kept happening and we had to take various things out of the water, even corpses.
After the army, I went back to Navrom, but the Securitate had to give you a notice so that you could leave. It was hard for me to get the opinion, especially since I had a name that was not very Romanian.
An inspector told me to start sailing with a ship that was making amber.
He said: You board, you go for a ride to Galati and back, then we are going to repair the ship and then I guarantee that I will give you the approval and you leave.
On the way back, the ship sinks. There is the famous Sadu case where I was one of the six survivors.
That was my start in commercial sailing.”
What year was he with Sadu?
In 88. The fact that the ship sank was clearly the fault of the crew, those on the deck made a serious mistake but the fact that people died was the fault of the Romanian state.
We had had time to make connections to the shore and put some wood from the boat to the stabilopods but they didn’t let us get off. Those on the shore who coordinated the rescue did not let us get off. Then the ship capsized and sank and give it a swim!
But winter at sea is not like at the pool… Many people died…
When I got on the next ship, my colleagues were determined to baptize me, but the captain said: Man, do you know who this is? This one escaped from Sadu me! This one is more baptized than all of us together.
I caught a few good trips, it was working, I was working as a motorcyclist. I was in the Second Section, in small cargo ships, I was doing the north of Europe, I was also doing a West Africa but mostly in the Mediterranean.
I also made a trip to Holland during which the revolution took place. I arrived in the country by boat, then I left once more and at the end of that trip I transferred to the NBR Constanta on the position of my father who retired in 1991.
That’s how I went through those hard years of 86-91. I met with former colleagues and they said that they were having a hard time, they had difficulty finding it difficult to go on the trip, the ships had been sold, the Navrom fleet was disappearing.”
And what else have you done with the boats?
“The NBR was based in the Port of Tomis. Every morning I was glad to be able to go to the boats to watch. We then witnessed the appearance of slowly, slowly, timidly built boats by one and the other: Culică Nicolae with the Bura boat, made by Iacob Frențescu according to some plans adapted by Bebe Beizadea according to the plans of a Swan.
Then Ibadula Şefcai who made Euxin II according to the same plans, then Bebe Șaraga’s Bega, Vasile Pascali with Capricorn, then Florică Nedelcu who had a beautiful Zefir boat, then Ion Vatamaniuc’s boat who was a one-handed man. Ukrainian from Bukovina, his right hand cut off and with his left hand he built this 10 m boat. Then Bebe Announcing with Cozia, then Stănei Matei with the Corsair, Gică Roșu with Daniela III and that’s about it.
I had found a boat called Bolero, a wreck that stood at the foot of the National Bank and on which it was written: “for sale”, it had escaped its ties, hit the rocks and sank.
I didn’t have a very high salary and when I called the man to ask him, he told me an exorbitant price, he said that the boat was made according to Conrad’s plans, that it was running well, to which I said: well it was running before, because now it is punctured. And we agreed on the price.
I learned the trade on that boat and on my money, working, unlike others who got directly on the customers’ boats, broke them, broke them and now they are called teachers.
I worked for 2 years to set up the boat. I repaired all its components and all the nautical experiences up to that point were useful to me, in high school, in the army, on the boat and so on. At first, because of poverty, I didn’t have an engine on the boat, I left the shore, I came back and moored only on sails.
I realized that I also had to enter into the legality regarding my license. Some people with a lot of experience who had come out in reserve from the Hydrographic Directorate, had formed the Naval League. They were doing some courses as a cruising cutter helmsman.
I signed up and thus I also obtained a certificate, the exam being particularly demanding with these old people who were 70-80 years old at the time. Admiral Zamfir, Rank 1 Munteanu, Rear Admiral Ștefan, Admiral Țigănaș, people who put one hand on the sextant and with the finger of the other hand the dot on the map, very good at their job.
The Kingdoms followed. Timofei’s great merit with the Royal Romanian Yacht Club was that he started the regattas in Romania. I met Timofei when he was looking to buy a boat. He came across Şefcai who sold him Euxinus II.
I started going to regattas with Bolero, which after I had repaired it was called Quasar and then Arquette. Then, after a while, I sold it.
I bought another model of boat, a Cruitzer, which I cut and lengthened. Initially at 6m it was almost 2.8m wide and allowed it to be longer, especially since the mirror was drawing water and it didn’t suit me, I made a skirt, I added a meter to the hull.
A boat came out at about 7.10m with which I was breaking everything at regattas. An unveiled boat, with a mast of about 9 m, I had also found a spinnaker.
It had a razor dinghy that I had blocked and put a torpedo on it from a cylinder filled with lead because otherwise I would capsize. Many regattas were organized by the Roman Navy.”
In what years did these things happen?
We are now talking about the years 98-99. No one could dispute how I ride the boat because I didn’t have an engine but these, one or two, when they saw that I was falling behind, they put the engine on.
This was the beginnings of heavy boat yachting in Romania. We had nothing to do with the Olympic classes, with the children.
Then I moved on in life, I got married, the children appeared, but I didn’t give up boats.
We found a sunken boat in Lake Zarguzon. I called a friend who had opened a construction company and had a Rabă, I got into the water, I put a rope behind the boat and I told him to pull, either it comes out or it breaks. The boat had been there so long that it had a tree grown in its midst. It took me a week, I rubbed it in one to get the smell of mud out. I started again to rebuild a boat, take and buy fiber, wood, stiplex…”
Was it big?
“A boat of about 6.5m. I registered it and named it Dauphin. I got to go with her for two days. The next day one came to the port of Tomis and asked me if I wouldn’t sell it. I replied jokingly: I say yes, I’ll sell it but now I’m leaving.
It was me with my wife and another couple. We left, walked around and came back at night. He waited for us on the shore, because he came to buy the boat. To get rid of him I took out the secret weapon: I said a price up to the month but he thought a little and said: okay, okay, so I was left without a boat again.
It was 2001. And here it happens that the National Bank, the Constanta branch, is disbanded and I remain unemployed. I had to take care of the family, so the boat thing remained secondary. I had gone to dental college and started making teeth in a laboratory.
But I still thought that I would have liked to make a career in the navy and I was looking to enroll in college again.
But to see what happened in 2004 when I arrived in the port of Belona: a trickster came to me, one who played the head of the port and when we had a fight once he said this to me: What do you know? That you are a dentist. I felt touched and decided to go to college, so I did the Maritime University of Constanta in Navigation.
I went through college easily, especially since the dean of navigation and others there recognized me as being from Sadu and said that I should be treated like a hero.
Plus I already knew a lot of the things that are taught there.
My diploma project was the sloop rig. The idea came from a delegation that the Maritime University of Oslo made to Constanta because the universities had twinned, the one in Norway with ours, and the Norwegian guests were interested in the phenomenon of yachting in Romania.”
What were the next steps?
“So in 2004, Timofei had opened the port of Belona in Eforie or was striving to open it, through the Royal Romanian Yacht Club. Two important businessmen had been co-opted into the club who financed the investment.
Timofei proposed me to come to the port as head of the technical department, so in August 2004 I got to work at Eforie. Most of the concrete was poured, I poured some of it, I installed various installations, I did all kinds of projects and I welded and executed all kinds of rails, cranes and trestles. Mr. Timofei made his first regatta that year.
The first customers of the port also appeared, including a Frenchman named Christophe Rule, who had a Jeanneau Sun Fast 40 boat kept for about 10 years in the Caribbean, after which it had remained in a very bad condition.
In the port there was me and Culică, a great gentleman and a great yachtman, as few Romania had, a maritime pilot, six or seven foreign languages spoken, a man of rare nautical culture and not only. Together we assured the Frenchman that we would take care of his boat. I took it out on land and worked on it, I think for half a year, reconditioned everything, living work, dead work, interior, engine, electrical systems, anchoring system,… all.
In the end, the boat was bought from the Frenchman by the businessman who has since become my boss.
Immediately after that I started taking him to the kingdoms. There were times when I was just walking with him and his daughter. I told him that yachting is not just about that, it is a lifestyle. That boat, Sun Fast 40, was a fast but tormented boat.
In2006 I went to the fair in Genoa and there he bought a cruise boat, Sun Odyssey 54. I took over the boat and spent the next 6 months alone on it on the coast of Sardinia.
In addition to setting up some installations, I was in charge of going by boat and discovering all the interesting places, from restaurants to isolated bays, so that I could take them to the point when they were going to come with the guests.
After my time in the Mediterranean, I brought the Jeanneau 54 to Romania where I also competed in regattas with her, despite the fact that the boat is a cruiser.
But my boss decided to buy a racing boat and tasked me with finding such a boat. I found an Archambault A40 in La Rochelle, France.
I went there and found the boat on land and when I said I wanted to test it on the water I was told that it was not that simple, that I would have to wait because the tide there is very high, somewhere at 4 m.
After the fittings and after the purchase was completed, we brought it on the trailer to Romania and armed it here in the port, in Belona.
But I had an accident and that year I couldn’t go on the boat, someone else ran as skipper.
In 2009 the regattas of the terrible championship organized by the Royal Romanian Yacht Club started , but on our boat there were all kinds of skippers and all kinds of crews, everyone tried different settings so that season was a fiasco.
In 2010 the boat went up to the shore from where it was sold and I, from that moment on, dedicated myself completely to cruising yachting.
The Jeanneau 54 was also sold recently, so now I’m working on the dry again.”
How do you relate to the nautical phenomenon in Romania?
“I am a follower of the idea that we should rejoice for each boat that is brought into the country, not start criticizing every time.
I can say that I am the man who saved many boats from the wreck stage and put them back on the water, they are still in operation.
I believe that yachting being a lifestyle, you can’t practice it just one month a year or a week, or on weekends.
The moment you assume that you practice yachting, the boat becomes your home, and there must be room for everyone in the house and then your wife and children must come to the boat, it cannot be otherwise.
Romanian society destroyed what is called yachting, first the communists by prohibiting access to water. As you approached the water even riding a broom, they would say: Wait, you want to run!
And now yachting is facing a lack of financial possibilities to be able to maintain a boat.
Until my boss buys a new boat for me to take care of, I got this boat. The model is Victoire, she is 7.5 meters tall and is drawn by a Dutchman. I bought it from Holland without seeing it, I paid for its transport and I waited for it in the country with a lot of emotions and I bought the engine separately, it was brought to me in my bag.”
“Changing lives for the better is my successful idea” Carmen Preda – founder of Capsea Yachting
I am convinced that in his career, Arthur Sahaghian, in all his years of boating, has so many stories on the water that would be worth telling that we will continue this discussion. My interlocutor was kind and agreed to a new meeting in the near future.
So we’re not ending here, we’re just taking a break until the next episode.
Comentați?