Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Email
James Nobel, Vice President and Marketing Director of Princess Yachts America, has been in his role most of the three decades since Princess Yachts partnered with Viking Yachts in the U.S. In this interview with Rightboat’s John Burnham, Nobel reflects on the course set by the two companies and describes some of the ingredients that go into making a Princess yacht.
John Burnham: Good morning, James. You’re the Vice President & Marketing Director for Princess Yachts America. It’s good to be on board the new Princess Y 80 with you.
James Nobel: Good to have you, John. I’m celebrating my 26th year with Princess Yachts America, which is the exclusive distributor for Princess Yachts in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.
Burnham: Congratulations on your longevity. Your offices are right up the street, aren't they?
Nobel: We do have a South Florida sales center right at the north entrance to the Palm Beach show, on the corner across from Palm Harbor Marina. In addition to that, we are part of the Viking Marine Group. Our sister company is Viking Yachts out of New Jersey. We have a big facility up in New Gretna where Viking Yachts and Valhalla boats are built. And then we have two service yards in Riviera Beach [Florida] right up the street here from Palm Beach, for the Viking product as well as Princess Yachts.
Burnham: You were saying a 30-year anniversary for one company and 60 for another, right?
Nobel: Yes, 2025, is a unique anniversary for us, and we're marking it at this Palm Beach International Boat Show this year—60 years for Princess Yachts, founded in 1965 by David King and two other gentlemen. David King is still involved in the business. He's taken a step back from the overall management and is much more focused on product development. So new models like this Y 80 have had his hand in, making sure that it stays very much a Princess, while also taking advantage of the evolution of design and technology.
The 30-year anniversary is for Princess Yachts America. In 1995, Viking formed a unique partnership with Princess Yachts to build the product specifically for the North American market. We started with an existing model range, and we were able to Americanize it, working within the constraints of the production at that time. Over the 30-year course of our relationship, we've been able to evolve the design so that new models are done from a clean sheet of paper. When that happens, the North American market is really one of the preeminent markets, with features, layouts, and technology all driven towards the American customer. That's not an accident. It's a result of us being the largest distributor for Princess Yachts in the world now for five years running. This is a big market because the North American, Central American, and Caribbean boaters are on the water. They use their boats, so our customers give us outstanding feedback as far as what they're looking for in their next new Princess, and the factory has done an incredible job of working with our team.
There's also synergy between the Viking Yacht Company and Princess Yachts with sharing secrets. Princess has always been renowned for incredible joiner work, their furniture manufacturing facility. It's a 37-acre facility in Plymouth, and it is dedicated solely to the production of furniture for each Princess yacht built. So Viking has had engineers over at the plant at Princess to see those processes over the years and vice versa. Viking has always been renowned for its fiberglass work, detailing and paint work, and we've had engineers over from Princess at the Viking facility. So there's a synergy between the companies, which is always very interesting over the years, between like-minded companies.
The Healy family started on April 1, 1964, and Pat Healy, now president of Viking Yacht Company, the son of founder Bill Healy, and his brother Bob Healy, and Bob Healy Jr., are involved with the company. So like Princess, you have the original founders still involved very much in a family operation, and the next generation is coming up as boat builders. I think that's what really makes the partnership so unique. To my knowledge, it's the only one in the marine industry where you have two manufacturers working together to bring a product to the market built and tailored for that customer.
The Princess S 80 (for "sportbridge") is built on the same platform as the Y 80. Princess Yachts photo
Burnham: What you've been describing is a British company and an American company collaborating on their strengths for 30 years now.
Nobel: Yes, 30 years. That’s when Viking was looking to produce more of a cruising style boat. Obviously Viking is now known predominantly for center consoles and sportfish yachts. They did some motor yachts in the early days and ‘80s and early ‘90s, but since then the focus has been primarily on sport fishing. So when the time came to build a cruising yacht, it made sense to not try to do it in-house, because we didn't have the facilities for as complex a product as a European-style cruising yacht.
So Tom Carroll, our president and CEO at the time, formed Viking Sport Cruisers and went over to England and looked at a number of companies there. In the end, it was Princess. He met with David King, did a sea trial on the English Channel, right in Plymouth Sound, and saw the companies’ synergies. The way Princess does things is vertically integrated with 80 percent of the product built in house. And the reason is because Plymouth is far removed from the resources of places like London and Southampton. Princess had to build things in-house that they needed to produce the boats, which is not unlike Viking in New Gretna, which is basically in a giant marshland north of Atlantic City. When either company was building boats, they needed to make parts and products for the boats, because they couldn't just go down the street and get it off the shelf.
Burnham: So self sufficiency was in their DNA.
Nobel: Exactly. And self sufficiency that leads to vertical integration, which, in the end, for the customer means you have quality built in when the products are built in house. We have a lot more control. For example, the furniture on this Y80 can be specifically tailored for the boat itself. We use Olezinski Naval Architecture for the design. They do the hull and the overall design, but they also work hand in hand with the engineers and designers of Princess Yachts. And so once the design is approved, the team then goes to work detailing all the interior, detailing all the components, all the furniture, fitting so specifically for that model. We don't just take a table or a couch unit, for example, from a boat and use it in another model. Everything is specific to that model. It takes a tremendous amount of design work and hand work to do that.
One thing that Princess is doing for their 60th anniversary is they're talking about the attention and distinction that comes in the detail. And what that means is that we have about 3,000 boatbuilders in Plymouth, England—everybody from the person organizing the shop to the person sending invoices and accounting, to the people assembling the product. Every one of those people has a hand, some quite literally, in the finished product.
What makes it luxury is that you can't just punch this out of a computer. Yes, we do use access routing to make parts. We design components using computers. But at the end, it's someone actually physically stitching the seams in the helm seats. There's someone actually assembling a helm console. There's somebody creating and assembling the joiner work. And so there's an incredible amount of handwork that still goes into producing this type of product.
Luxurious and spacious, the Y 80 main saloon. Princess Yachts photo
Burnham: I think you've just answered my question, but let me put it out there anyway, which is, when we think of Princess yachts and the brand, we think of a premium-level cruising yacht. And I was going to ask you what distinguishes that premium level? It sounds like your answer would be all these details—the handwork, the every model gets its own look, furniture, pieces and parts.
Nobel: That is the ethos of what they try to do. There's an incredible amount of detail, of handwork that still goes into building the boat, even though we are utilizing technology to create the overall design, to create some of the bigger components. We're using technology to create and build furniture parts before we then hand assemble them and hand finish them. But it's a little bit more than that. The next side of that would be that as a company, first of all, Plymouth England is a seafaring town. It's been the home to a naval base for many years. It was one of the heaviest bombed cities in England during World War II, because there was a submarine base there. And the submarine base actually forms part of one of the yards of Princess. So there's a very rich maritime history there. The Mayflower left from Plymouth bound for the United States. The nautical history of that area of the world is absolutely incredible. So it just makes sense that they do well at boatbuilding. But it's more than just creating a great-looking product. It's even more than just creating great living spaces and great functionality. The boats, first and foremost, are incredible sea keeping vessels, designed to run in some of the nastiest conditions that you're willing to take. So the hull design is very refined. It's a dry ride. There's no intercoastal in England. So if you're going out for a ride, you're either in a Sound or you're in the English Channel, or you're in the North Atlantic. So it's not like Florida, where we can stay inside if it's a little rough out and out in the ocean. The boats have to be built to run in rough water, and they have to be built to be comfortable and dry and get people there safely. That's first and foremost. So you have a great sea keeping vessel. The second thing, of course, is the usability, the functionality, the creature comforts. So it really is the combination of British engineering, which is a very practical approach to boatbuilding, and systems that are easy to access and designed specifically for purpose. Electrical wiring, for example, is labeled at both ends for source and purpose. So if someone's working on the boat, they're not guessing, looking at a bunch of gray shielding and wondering where that wire goes and having to trace it. Everything is laid out. It's labeled. So it's a very American approach in that sense.
I think some of what Viking does over here in the United States translates very well and matches up quite well with Princess's approach. And I think that's part of why the relationship was well formed. Because they have the same thought process. When building a boat, we don't just put it together and forget about it. You actually might have to go in and troubleshoot and replace components. So we build the boat from a solid engineering and system standpoint, you have the incredible sea-keeping ability, and then you have that finite detail, and that can only come from doing things in house. Everything is built in house, so you get the same level of quality, whether you're looking at a 45-footer or 95, biggest in the range. So it is a product that is luxury through and through. And what makes it luxury is not because we have fancy fabrics or beautiful leathers, that's certainly part of it, but it's the detail and the handwork that goes into finishing those wonderful materials.
Burnham: So in the years you've been working, representing Princess here in the US, what would you say is the largest evolutionary change in the brand?
Nobel: Evolution is the perfect word, John, because it's one thing about Princess that really makes a Princess…they didn't go out and build by committee. When a new model comes to the plate, and this is not by the way, a knock on anybody else's approach out there, it's just what makes Princess unique, is it starts with a clean sheet of paper that doesn't forget all the things that worked well in the previous model, and I'll use the Y 80 as an example. We've done very well with this boat. In the United States, we've already sold four boats retail. We have a few more coming in that are sold retail for delivery, and there's more beyond that, available.
One of our top customers for the Y 80 is coming out of the Y 78 which is the boat that this replaces. And you might think most customers are going to go probably 78 to maybe 85…they might even go bigger than that but it's a testament to Princess’s approach to keeping what works well when they do a new design and evolving the design instead of scrapping it and revolutionizing it. In other words, this Y 80 carries a lot of the same features that people loved about the 78 but it adds the advantage of newer technology that's come to fruition in the past five to six years. It adds the advantage of new building techniques, where we might be able to gain more volume, we might be able to squeeze just a little more space out of our hull to fit deeper compartments, more friendly hanging lockers and things like that. So designs are evolving instead of completely starting from scratch, so it protects the brand image. So when you look at a 78 and then you look at a Y 80, they're very similar. Instead of, well, my 78 looks old now because the 80 is so much newer and so much different than the 78, our customers appreciate that. It's a value protection. The customer that's buying the 78 or the 75 that came before, it still feels very much a part of the Princess brand because their boat looks similar to the new product that's coming out. But there's enough of a change and enough of a difference and just a little bit more refining that happens.
The full-width, mid-cabin master of the Y 80. Princess Yachts photo
Burnham: What's your favorite new aspect of the way 80 here?
Nobel: Actually, this space that we're sitting in here, is probably my most favorite. One of the sacrifices when the factory was looking to where they could gain volume and still maintain roughly the same footprint over the 78 was that the 78 had a private stairwell down to the master stateroom, which the owners of the 78 absolutely loved. One of our first buyers of an 80 coming out of 78, one of his harshest criticisms was “I loved my separate entrance to the master,” and he was going to miss that. We might not have sold him the 80 because of that, but when he really started to look through the boat, he realized that the refinements in the storage space amd the volume of the boat had grown significantly. This area here in the saloon, for me, personally, works a lot better on the 80 than it did on the 78 although the actual footprint of the space is the same
The other thing that we've gained is that we have an incredible amount of natural light. So every time a new model comes out, we seem to be getting bigger and bigger window scapes because we're able to refine the structure so that it's a little bit thinner, but equally as strong. We're using resin infusion construction so we're able to get that perfect resin-to-glass ratio. So we can use thinner profiles on some of the structural members. The glass itself is now structural glass. So that's not just a window pane. It actually can hold structure. So it's a weight-bearing piece. So that's attributed to the company that's making the glass is they're building the glass to be a part of the structure, not just stick a window in a hole. And it works quite well to help us open up the interior expanse.
Burnham: The stairwell on the 78, was it right back here?
Nobel: It was just forward of the dining table. So we still have one central stairwell, which is the case on our 85 as well. But I think in doing that, we've actually created a really nice lobby area, so the lower accommodation actually feels a little bit bigger. We've actually increased volume by eliminating that private access.
And that Grand Master state room is still set back from the guest staterooms. You have that little bit more of a lobby area down there, so that kind of creates that little bit of a separation. So it's not unlike walking into a split living home where you have a grand entrance or a lobby, and then you have a master that's kind of set off from your guest room.
Every piece of Princess furniture and every detail is crafted for a specific model. Princess Yachts photo
Burnham: Still pretty private…you were describing before we turned the cameras on, the approach Princess takes to building an 80 and creating a platform and then creating three different models off of that. Can you just give us a short take on that?
Nobel: Princess is celebrating 60 years in 2025, and the company has always invested heavily, or reinvested, I should say, into the product. They've always produced two to three, sometimes four new models a year, which is incredibly aggressive. It requires a massive amount of capital, and they're committed to that. One of the challenges is that they have flybridge yachts and the V class, the express boats. Over the years, they've added other classes. So they have a Y class, which is more the larger motor yacht class, and they have the F class, which is the flybridge boats, but not geared towards a full-time crew. They'll have crew accommodation, but not like a Y 80 or an 85. They have the V class still, which is the Express range, and that goes from 40 all the way up to 65 feet now. And then they added the S class, which is the sport bridge. So they took the concept of the Express boat and they added a sport bridge on top of the Express and created a whole new variant, which kind of combines the best of all worlds. You have the living space of a motor yacht, but the ability to open the boat up like you do on an express and a big enough sport bridge that you can still entertain and still a great place to run the boat from, but it's a bit lower profile. So if you have a customer that has a bridge restriction or height restriction, or they just want the ease of an Express, jumping on and go—that's where the S Class shines. Of course, we've done other products like the X class now, where it was more of an enclosed pilothouse or a sky lounge type of approach. And that started with the X 95. We have an x 80, which is a variant of the Y 80 that has an upper deck with an enclosed sky lounge.
So they're able to create a few different classes of models. One of the ways that they've done that is that they've gone to more of a platform approach with certain models. So I'll use the 80 as an example. They started out, they developed the X 80. So they took the hull to the lower accommodation. Obviously, they have a saloon in the main deck area, where we can do a main deck master. We can do a bigger, kind of a country kitchen style dining area that's forward on the main deck. And then you have the whole flybridge area, which has an open portion, then it has a full enclosed sky lounge with a pilothouse. So that would be the x 80, and that was introduced at this show two years ago.
The Princess F 58 cruises at 25 knots and can hit 35 knots wide open.
They then introduced the Y 80. And the reason they were able to bring that out on a shorter timeline than if they had started from scratch is that they used the hull of the X 80. They used the lower accommodation with a few minor tweaks. And then the superstructure in the flybridge area was separately developed, so we've now got two models out of the same running surface, so to speak. And then we have a third variant that's coming out that was just launched in Cannes earlier this year in the fall, and that's the S 80, which uses the same lower accommodation with a few tweaks. The main deck area is more of an express style boat. You have a lower helm and a very large dining area. That's actually an al fresco situation, so it's protected and covered, but it sits outside of the main saloon. You have an aft galley, and more of a kind of a casual living area on that boat. And then you have a sporybridge, which is, I don't want to call it a small bridge. It's actually quite big, but it's smaller than what we have on the Y 80. So that's three different variants coming out of a single hull.
Another thing with Princess that also makes them luxury is that, I'll use Porsche as an example. You know, the 911 is iconic. It's been virtually the same shape, virtually the same car since it started. And that's a real example of something that you just tweak and evolve, but it's classic and it's timeless, and it holds its value because it's not drastically redesigned. And I would liken it to Princess’s approach to that. They'll bring a model out, and I'll use the 75 as an example. We brought the 75 out 2019; we did incredibly well with that boat in this market. About three years in, Princess had changed the whole window to make a larger window, instead of more of a rectangular hull side window, which brought it in line with boats that had been introduced since the 75 was launched. If you look back at the history of Princess models, that's pretty consistent. They will build a model, and they will get four to five to six years out of a given model. I think that's the type of value protection for the customer, because they don't feel like what they just bought is obsolete. It still very much looks like the new models that are being produced. It has all of the features and amenities. It has craftsmanship, and I think that's helped really send the market the message that Princess creates a luxurious and timeless appeal. It's a design that's not eccentric; it's very understated, it's elegant, but it's also very contemporary.
Burnham: There you have it. Thank you for your time this morning, James…I'm not sure I've been on a more comfortable couch!
