in Plymouth. So rather than teams individually building boats from start to finish, moulded hulls were mounted on cradles and entered at one end of a factory unit, and each week the row of boats moved one step down the line with teams completing the same jobs on each boat until a finished unit was dispatched from the other end. Once up to speed, Princess was building the 42 at the rate of one a week for much of its life. Building boats with this frequency


is fine, but you have to sell them at the same rate. Princess achieved this by bringing 30 years of experience to bear, creating a boat with a near perfect blend of proportion, quality, performance and price. Over its 10-year history many tried to dethrone the 42, but none has quite captured the market in the same way. Creating such an icon is a massive success; replacing it however, now


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that’s a challenge. The most important consideration was not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and to that end the concept of the 43 is almost identical to that of the 42. The execution, though, is a serious advancement. It starts on the outside, with a sharper profile. Larger bonded flush panes create a smooth wraparound glasshouse, the topsides are sheer, having lost the pronounced knuckle of the 42, the transom is curved and features twin doors, and there’s an optional hydraulic high/low bathing platform. The cockpit now has a fixed folding table, the seating curving around it, and up top the flybridge is bigger and far more intelligently laid out. Instead of the C-shaped dinette alongside the double helm, the 43 has an L-shaped seat that can convert to a sunpad, allowing crew to face forward on passage. There’s a bar with a griddle, and back aft a sociable seating area and a table.


There are subtle nods to its ancestors. Twin trumpet horns on the front edge of the flybridge have featured on every Princess flybridge boat since the 37, and the side vents in the hull with a slash of stainless steel can also trace their roots back to its ancestors. Perhaps the small oval portholes are beginning to look dated in an era of large hull windows,


though. Inside it’s the same story; the basic layout is virtually identical to the 42, but the whole area has been rebooted. It’s a bigger boat than the 42 for a start, three feet longer and three inches wider. Add resin-infused construction into the mix (a method that increases structural strength, reducing the need for stiffening, which in turn frees up


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PHOTOS: Graham Snook


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