Princess V62 Story

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I’ll admit up front that I have been a fan of Princess since my first opportunity to sea-trial one of its boats more than a dozen years ago. I like the way the Brits fuss over technical detail and admire the English reserve that seems to prevent them from buggering their designs with silly paint schemes and flavor-of-the-day styling gimmicks. This purity of purpose is why the builder’s V-Class yachts appeal to me. The designs are what we once referred to here in the colonies as “express cruisers.” As I inspected the V62 it occurred to me just how far this breed of boat has evolved (see the complete photo gallery here).

The V62 is one of nine express-style yachts Princess offers from 39 to 85 feet. The express cruiser timeline gained traction in the United States in the 1970s as young families gravitated to 20-something (foot) family weekenders. By the 1980s, fans of the breed had aged a bit and migrated upward to 40 feet. When European builders established a beachhead in the Americas in the 1990s, a flood of larger express boats followed. At first, translation was difficult. European yachtsmen rarely spent the night aboard or cared to visit the engine room. Crew were packed into closetlike quarters. Today, European builders and American yachtsmen have adapted.



While the “bigger is better” mantra has been the rule for a decade, some supersize designs look awkward. This is not the case for an express yacht in the 60-foot class. To my eye this measure is something of a sweet spot for those who wish to cruise with friends and family. Others seem to agree, says James Nobel, vice president of Viking Sport Cruisers, the Princess distributor in the Americas and the Caribbean. “We are seeing folks with larger motoryachts moving down and folks with smaller expresses that would have typically moved up to flybridge boats take a serious look at larger expresses — all are looking to optimize time on the water.”

The V62 is fashionable but she has not been compromised by the stylist’s pen. Her lines are pleasantly uncluttered and incorporate the simple shapes and sensible styling cues that are common to the line. Her sheer is relatively straight from stem to amidships and then slopes aft. This seems the fashion these days, and while it sometimes appears droopy to my eye, that’s not the case with the V62. The look is not overdone and balances nicely with her deck line and the sweep of her windscreen and arch — she’s a good-looking boat.



Her exterior cockpit has a seating area and a table opposite a wet bar with a refrigerated drink box and an electric grill. A sun pad aft covers the tender garage, which can accommodate an 11-foot rigid-bottom inflatable. Stairs lead aft to a hydraulic platform, which can be fitted with a cradle for a PWC. A sliding door/bulkhead opens the exterior cockpit area to the air-conditioned bridge. A seating area faces a flat-panel TV on a lift that’s hidden in the cabinetwork. Adjustable helm and companion seats face a dash that accommodates a single large display and a handful of smaller electronics. This might seem tight to navigation nerds, but it’s fine by me, as is the analog instrument cluster, which Nobel suggests was inspired by Aston Martin. Overhead, a glass-paneled section of the roof retracts with a push of a button — a convertible — nice!