The Princess V48, first of the yard’s IPS boats, spawned two different but equally appealing models
A relative latecomer to Volvo Penta’s pod drive party, Princess Yachts waited almost a decade after the launch of the IPS system before introducing its first production pod drive boat in the shape of the V48.
“We’d actually trialled IPS on three previous models,” Will Green, sales director of Princess Yachts tells me. “With performance and seakeeping being critical, we had to be sure we would develop a hull shape that would meet Princess’s seakeeping standards when working with IPS propulsion.”
Ironically, one of the previous boats that Princess had experimented with was a Princess V48, but not the model you see here. Fitted with conventional shaftdrive diesels, the original V48 launched in 2004 was an evolution of the V46 that it launched a couple of years earlier.
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However, the V48 we’re talking about was launched in 2013 and was new from the pods up. In fact, the IPS drives were just
the beginning of the radical new design.
Although only slightly wider and longer than the old V48 (beam was up from 13ft 6in to 13ft 11in, and there was an additional foot in hull length), the new boat was considerably taller, creating far more interior volume.
Combine that with the fact that pod drives allowed the engines to be positioned further aft and suddenly you’ve got the potential for some special accommodation below decks – a potential that Princess took full advantage of.
Read the full report in the August 2018 issue of MBY.
