Fulvio Dodich had been to the Rosetti Marino shipyard in Italy several times but never could make a deal. He’d tried in 2007 while looking to build bigger motoryachts for the Ferretti Group. He’d tried again in 2010 while hoping to acquire Baglietto Yachts. He’d ended up going in other directions, including becoming CEO of Sanlorenzo, while Rosetti continued its decades-long history of building offshore platforms and vessels for use in some of the harshest environments where the oil and gas industry operates.
Then, in 2017, Dodich’s phone rang. Rosetti needed a partner to help the shipyard move into the luxury yacht-building business.
“In one week, we decided to do everything,” Dodich says. “On June 13, 2017, we created the Rosetti Superyachts company.”
They have yet to sign a contract for a build but are close in several negotiations, Dodich says, with strong interest in the two designs that Rosetti presented at the Palm Beach International Boat Show. The first, a 157-foot supply vessel that blends yacht styling with helipads, is the combination of commercial strength and luxury living that Dodich says he envisioned when he joined Rosetti.
“I can add things from my life: exceptionally good woodwork, boat entertainment systems with the best contractors, and fairing and painting,” he says. “For shadow vessels and supply vessels, that kind of fairing and painting can be optional. Some customers want a yacht to go into the North Sea and see whales or fjords. To have fairing and painting is wrong. The first time you touch a piece of ice, you make a disaster that costs a lot of money. So the commercial painting is still an option for customers who are dreaming of exploring an unexpected corner of this Earth.”
The second concept is a 278-foot superyacht. Like the supply vessel, it has a design by Tommaso Spadolini and adds a diesel-electric propulsion system by MTU and Rolls-Royce.
“The design of the boats are quite different, but both can be used in extreme sea conditions,” Dodich says. “The dream is that we have to do a reinterpretation of these boats. We want to show to the world what we can offer: wonderful, unbelievable pieces of superyacht art with exceptionally reliable supply vessels.”
As of early April, Dodich and Spadolini were thinking about what comes next.
“We are bad boys here,” Dodich says with a laugh. “We’re having a lot of fun thinking about and designing something new.”
