Tactical 77

Made for an owner with a special operations background, this military-style build is a cohesion of extremes.

You know the saying, fortune favors the timid? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because it favors the bold, or possibly someone with a preference for a tough, military-style vessel that looks ready to take on escalating conflict in the South China Sea. One such client approached Bill Prince of Bill Prince Yacht Design in Port Washington, Wisconsin (and the columnist for Inside Angle on page 28) with an incredibly detailed concept in mind.

“The owner has spent a lifetime defending our country and has a pretty serious business providing instruction to various government agencies,” said Prince, who hinted at his client’s special operations forces background. “He wants a really comfortable yacht that will scare the Coast Guard from a quarter mile away.”

Once the preliminary design was determined, Prince and his team shopped it around to various builders. It was a natural fit for Tactical Custom Boats, which specializes in the construction of high-performance, aluminum-hulled, luxury, all-weather vessels. The Tactical 77 is currently being designed and engineered by Prince, and will be built by Tactical at its shipyard in British Columbia, with sea trials currently planned for late 2019. When the client approached Prince last year, he owned a custom 40foot aluminum RIB with four outboards. “He used it like it was meant to be used,” said Prince, “but he wanted a much bigger boat so he could do some cruising with his family.”

Prince was tasked with designing a cohesion of extremes. The client wanted a high-performance vessel with pseudo-military exterior styling and interiors that emphasized luxurious, superyacht-like accommodations. According to Prince, the interiors “are very masculine, almost monochromatic, in black, silver and gray. The emphasis is on a really luxurious stateroom, with elevated overhead skylights and nine feet of headroom.”

The 77 will also feature a Seakeeper 26 gyro, suspension seating, three-station joystick controls and an open cockpit layout with a unique articulating transom platform that will allow a variety of tenders and toys to be launched and retrieved without a davit. The aft cockpit is designed to be very flexible, offering a wide variety of mounting chocks for toys of different sizes and shapes, including a 17-foot RIB, PWCs and even an eight-wheel amphibious landing craft—you know, when you just need to storm that beachhead.

“You have this new generation of younger yachtsmen that want nothing to do with the blue blazer or the ascot. They want to go kick ass and catch fish,” said Prince. “They’re looking for something unique.” tacticalcustomboats.com —Simon Murray