Princess Win Big at the Motorboat and Yachting Awards

Princess F45 – Winner Flybridges up to 60ft 

With big shoes to fill given the provenance of its predecessor, the F45 wiped the slate clean and came to market with a thoroughly different accommodation layout and, in only the second instance in a Princess flybridge model, Volvo Penta pod drives. This may be the smallest boat in the range but it feels every inch a Princess thanks to its beautifully judged interior and some very clever design work from the team at Pininfarina.

The use of soft curves around the outside of the boat is particularly successful and turns what would ordinarily be dull slabs of GRP into truly eye-catching design elements. Its styling is more ambitious than the boat it replaces and all the better for it in our opinion. At its heart, the F45 is simply a brilliant cruising boat for a family and the decision to opt for IPS makes all the more sense when you consider this is likely to be a boat that people step up to from smaller weekenders.

Princess Y72 – Winner Flybridges over 60ft

The Princess Y72 was awarded best Flybridge over 60ft, tested by MBY during challenging conditions in our brand home of Plymouth. The Y72 “rose to the occasion spectacularly and showed that for all the glamour, polish and attention to detail of a modern Princess motoryacht, the shipyard still gets the formula right when it comes to seakeeping”

“There isn’t a single area of this boat that feels compromised or underdesigned, which may sound easy when you’re dealing with a craft of these dimensions but certainly isn’t always the case. Yet the designers also know when to show restraint and let the spaces speak for themselves; it seems odd to say this of a 21m multi-million pound mini superyacht but the Y72 resists being flash, nor is it laden with features that could be cast off as gimmicks.

It is a boat as comfortable thundering along at 30 knots as it is with its stabilisers engaged slipping along in single figures, where its 4,500-litre fuel capacity provides excellent cruising range. The Y72, in the judges’ opinion, is the best boat that Princess currently builds and right up there with the best that it has ever built.”

 The Princess X95 was also highly commended in the custom boat category.