Marco Cecchi is a luminary for those who know their boats and love the sea. Awise old man, but with a youthful clearness of mind
by Valeria Caldelli – photo by Andrea Muscatello
IF HE COULD TURN BACK TIME,Mario Cecchi would become amechanic, because dismantling engines and putting them back together has always been his passion, yet his three boats are all sailing ships. «They’re more environmentally friendly, and they don’t make so much noise», he says, to explain the apparent contradiction.
However, feeling compelled to dismantle something, he tinkered with the rudder of his nine-metre fibreglass boat, a Freedom with two masts but no shrouds. The reverse gear still doesn’t work, but the boat now moves more quickly.
For Marco Cecchi, nothing can replace the quiet pleasure of a challenge. Born on the banks of the Arno in Tuscany but a long-standing adopted citizen of Viareggio, and a seafarer and friend of all seafarers, he has a thirst for a challenge in his blood. Not so much in the sports field , but in the world of business.
It was in 1978 when he ended up with a sample of a new substance in his hands that dried instantly like a varnish: Teflon. It is now known universally, since it entered our homes on ‘non-stick’ pans, but at the time it just seemed like a slightly strange product.
When the young Marco went to investigate its characteristics, he discovered it was a polymer with a low coefficient of friction, and a few tests revealed its excellent flow-enabling properties. So he said to his father «I’d like to try it on rowing boats and racing cars». His father shook his head: «You won’t get anywhere», he replied. But Marco succeeded. And Cecchi Gustavo & C. became one of the first companies in Italy to successfully bring to market aproduct that would go on to revolutionise both the maintenance and manufacturing of boats.
Gustavo was the father, and Marco the stubborn son who now runs the business. He joined it in 1972, after a period spent building boats in a shipyard. Since then hehas been travelling backwards and forwards across Italy to sell ‘his’ varnishes and ‘his’ resins, products he himself modified based on insight gleaned from new scientific discoveries, but also from adverts, newspapers or the internet.
In this way he has gradually ‘developed’ the various epoxy resins, additives, fillers, sealants, varnishes and enamels that he produces. From the very start, Marco catered for both wooden and fibreglass boats. By listening to boat owners, captains, fishermen and other customers in various regions across Italy, he gets to understand the most important issues they’re dealing with, what he calls his ‘learning’ time.
And then, once he’s learnt, he invents new materials and responds to his customers’ queries, from a ‘spongy’ deck and water damage to the base of the rudder or mast, through to osmosis ‘bubbles’ beneath the hull of fibreglass boats and joints on wooden or plywood craft.
«You have to avoid becoming a fish in a tank: you need to take a new step every day to keep up withthe times and ensure you have the right product», he explains. «On many occasions, however, I have had to give up various projects, because I knew I wouldn’t have the right customers. We are a small company, and I have never wanted to bite off more than we could chew. It’s impossible to launch a car at 200 mph if it can’t get above 100 mph».
His watchword is the Japanese term Kaizen, meaning constant improvement, but in small steps, day after day. On the other hand, he’s a perfectionist, and feels he owes a lot to a physics teacher who planted in him the ‘seed’ of curiosity.
Curiosity gave rise to experience, and experience gave rise to the best ‘remedies’ for various situations. «Which is better: your grandma’s cooking or your mum’s cooking?», he asks, before adding «Children normally say ‘Grandma’s’. It’s not about the recipe, but about habit, and manual skill…». For this reason, he also invented some initials, which he likes to add to his signature: NL Marco Cecchi, where NL stands for ‘non laureato’, meaning ‘non-graduate’. Just to be clear.
If you ask the perfectionist what he does in his spare time, he’ll reply that he thinks about work. But that’s not entirely true. In reality he spends hours in bookshops, looking for titles and authors that pique his curiosity. From medicine and engineering to psychology – everything except novels, «because life is already a novel, and there’s no need to add any more». He reads them all from cover to cover, and keeps those that fascinate him on his bedside table. He often gives copies away to clients and employees, and even gets them reprinted at his own expense when the bookshop is out of stock.
In his room, on the first floor of 253 Via Coppino, in Viareggio, the teak floor is treated with his own products, because he likes feeling like he’s on the deck of a boat out at sea. On the walls, meanwhile, alongside the photos, the jams his brother-in-law gives him and the traces of memories that not even the most epoxy of his epoxy resins could make waterproof, there is another sea.
A sea of books. On everything, from engines and interpreting dreams to sailing, medicine and physics. Here, every day, he takes on another challenge, and overcomes it. But only in small steps: through kaizen, as we mentioned above.
At this point the Marco Cecchi businessman turns into a philosopher: «Sometimes the days all seem the same to us, but actually every moment is full of surprises, which we only understand afterwards. Someone once wrote– I don’t remember who – that it is not discovering new land that is important, but looking with new eyes».
(Marco Cecchi, a man of rare sensitivity – Barchemagazine.com – June 2019)
