USED BOAT: PRINCESS 56

- 2017 PRICE RANGE £650,000

This big, classy cruiser brings strong performance, spacious cabins and a top-quality finish to the table

eplacing the already excellent Princess 54 was a tough job. The Princess 56, revealed to the public for the first time at the 2012 Southampton Boat Show was actually a larger boat than even the silver badge glued to the superstructure suggested, with an overall length just a few inches short of 60ft.

A rakish-looking flybridge cruiser, the 56 adhered to the Princess ethos of subtlety over brashness – this was and still is a good-looking boat. And while Princess firmly eschewed hull colours on earlier flybridge boats, the 56 was available from the off with Midnight Blue or Steel Grey hull tones on the options list priced at just under or over £10,000, depending on whether owners specified colour from the rubbing band to the knuckle line or all the way down to the boot top line.

Step aboard via the frequently chosen optional electro-hydraulic swim platform (capable of lifting up to 400kg of tender or PWC) and you find two sets of steps up to the main deck, instead of the single set on the 54, allowing easy access whichever side you berth. Carry on up to the flybridge and the changes keep coming. The 54 had Princess’s generic double helm seats to port and a large C-shaped dinette to starboard with a sunpad aft. For the 56, the double helm seats remained. The wet bar immediately behind them was also still there, albeit vastly improved. But a lot more thought went into the layout generally. So the 56 gets an L-shaped seat next to the helm, but facing forward, so far