sell in their hundreds.” Princess wants to appeal
to these customers, younger buyers who may have
never considered buying a boat nor associate with
the lifestyle.
The yard decided an entirely new approach was
called for so having poached one of McLaren’s top
composite technologies experts Paul Mackenzie as
product development director, they began talks with
BAR Technologies and Italian design house Pininfarina
to create something that was fresh, innovative but still,
in its words, ‘recognisable as a Princess.’
“The creative process of the R35 is totally different
to other boats within the Princess range,” Mackenzie says. “It
has been a collaborative effort involving senior members of the
Princess management team, BAR Technologies and Pininfarina
from day one.” Dealers have been a crucial sounding board
throughout too, a mouthpiece for the existing customer base that
has shown a thirst for a Princess like this, especially in the Med.CARBON COPY
The R35 will be constructed in its own dedicated facility at
the Newport Street premises. The boat will be 100% carbon
fi bre – we’re talking everything from hull to decks to locker
lids – and though Princess has been building components
for its larger boats out of the material
for some time, this is the fi rst
boat that doesn’t have a strand of
glassfi bre in its DNA. Princess claims
it is 25% lighter than an equivalent
glassfi bre boat. A prototype has beenbuilt to allow the team to relentlessly test the boat’s handling
and performance. A sage move given this is going to be the
fi rst 50-knot Princess.
The ‘R’ in R35 stands for revolution, and this is where BAR
Technologies has a major part to play. The team at Princess want
to create a fast dayboat where performance is truly accessible and
ride comfort is paramount. A planing hull with a pair of Volvo
Penta 430hp V8 petrols on sterndrives take care of the fi rst part
but it was the second bit of this equation that sent the BAR team
back to their skunkworks to put their heads together. What they’ve
come back with is a foiling system that harnesses the technology
in an entirely different manner to what we have seen before.
These guys have exhaustive experience in using foils to boost
performance and effi ciency, so this comes as no great surprise.
The inverted T-shaped foils on the R35 do not lift the hull
clear of the water, as would normally be the case. Instead, the
carbon-fi bre fi ns deploy from within the hull just forward
of the transom to produce additional lift at the stern and
‘push’ the bow down into the water to ensure the sharpest part
of the hull is cleaving through it, softening the ride. In addition,
a gyroscope is constantly monitoring the boat’s movements
and feeding information to the foils via a computer so that
they can actively adapt to the sea state. On the fi nished boat
there will be a dial equivalent to Land Rover’s terrain response
system, allowing the skipper to adjust
it to suit the current sea conditions.
The team is still confi guring the settings
but are thinking ‘comfort’, ‘sport’
and ‘rough weather’ modes. Within
those parameters, the foils will adjustBRIT PACKDifferent settings
allow the driver
to tune the ride to
suit the conditionsThe foils increase grip
and offer incredible
levels of agility
MBY’s Jack talks to
the Princess team