Our resident boating market expert, Nick Burnham takes a look at some of the best £100k thoroughbreds available right now
Normally, when I do these price challenge features, I like to provide a broad spread of size and ages. Occasionally I will throw in a “Have you seen what you can get for the same money as a not particularly special car?” reference. Today it’s the Audi A3 – a VW Golf in a posh frock.
Audi has brought out a special edition of this hatchback – the RS3 Competition Limited – and is charging a bonkers £100,000 for it!
This month’s selection of impressive craft you can buy for similar money is driven by one boat, the Princess 46 Riviera. Not long after I started working in boat sales back in the late 1980s we had one of these in stock and it was magnificent.
It looked superb, powered through the sea like it was ironing it flat, and had a cockpit the size of a tennis court. The fact you can buy one now for less than a small German hot hatch frankly blows my mind. So I decided to see what other fabulous and once unobtainable thoroughbred boats you can now buy for posh VW Golf money.
Princess 46 Riviera
Built: 1992
Price: £79,950
Launched in 1988, this was the flagship of Princess’s open Riviera range (a badge later dropped in favour of the V designation it now uses). It was in production for five years, but the early 1990s recession dampened demand for such flamboyant sportscruisers.
Interior
This is not a huge boat internally by modern standards, but at almost 50ft long, you’re not short of space. The owner’s cabin is in the bow with a centre-line double bed, and there’s a guest cabin aft with two singles.
It also has two heads: a day heads and an en suite to the forward cabin, but both are wet rooms with shower curtains. The saloon is a great size, and the galley is all- electric (a generator was standard).
Princess experimented with a ‘sportier’ interior finish for some of its Riviera models, so there is very little of the teak that was rife in flybridge boats of the time. Most 46 Rivieras had a grey interior, but later boats like this one were finished in a more attractive cream colour.
The cream interior of this example is a rare but desirable option
Exterior
You could argue this boat is dated, with its small portholes and stainless steel framed windscreen, but the fact is that it has a magnificent profile. The rather 1980s grey vinyl stripes have been removed, and the grey engine vents on the stern quarters painted white on this example. Someone has added a fixed extended bathing platform to carry a tender – originally large stainless steel davits would have been used.
Performance
It would have had Caterpillar or Volvo Penta power when new – the 3208TA V8 Cats offering 375hp or 425hp; the straight six Volvos producing the 380hp of this boat in TAMD 71B form; or 430hp in uprated TAMD72 format. This would have been a 30+ knot boat when new, although it may have lost a knot or two in the intervening 30+ years.
The forward owner’s cabin isn’t huge but does have its own en suite heads/shower room
Seakeeping
With a modified deep-vee hull, shaft drive, reverse sheer transom (which increased waterline length) tunnelled props and a low profile, these boats were great at sea and also surprisingly manageable in harbour. Bow thrusters were rare in those days unless specified as an option, but this boat has one, and a stern thruster!
Princess 46 Riviera specifications
Length: 49ft 0in (15.0m)
Beam: 14ft 0in (4.3m)
Draft: 3ft 0in (0.9m)
Displacement: 12 tonnes
Fuel capacity: 1,364 litres
Engines: Twin Volvo Penta TAMD 71B 380hp diesel engines
For sale: Boats.co.uk
Sunseeker 46 Manhattan
Built: 1995
Price: £94,950
Remember when a Porsche looked nothing like a BMW, and a BMW looked nothing like a Volvo? Today when you spot yet another SUV on the motorway it could be anything, and to some extent the same is true for boats.
But it wasn’t always this way, as this boat demonstrates. First shown to the world at the 1995 London Boat Show and developed from the Manhattan 45, this was unquestionably Sunseeker. It’s hard to believe the firm had only been building flybridge boats seriously for about five years at this point!
Interior
Unusually, for a mid-40ft flybridge cruiser from one of the British Big Four at the time, this boat runs vee drives, which means the engines are right at the back beneath the cockpit, rather than under the saloon floor.
That leaves space there for a third cabin, with a double bed slid back into this area, as well as a further twin-bedded (rather than bunk) guest cabin and an owner’s cabin in the bow. The galley is on the lower deck (they almost always were in the 20th century), so the saloon has a huge curved sofa behind the helm to starboard and a long sideboard to port.
The views from inside aren’t as expansive as they would be on a modern flybridge cruiser
Exterior
With its Testarossa-style strakes across the saloon side windows, winglets on the radar arch and private jet fuselage-style windscreens, this is a bold design that has stood the test of time. An integral platform and transom door were modern touches at the time, as were the integral stairs to the flybridge rather than a ladder. The passerelle on this boat doubles as a tender hoist, suspending a pretty meaty 30hp RIB.
Performance
Engine options ranged from twin 430hp diesels through to a pair of 600hp motors that Sunseeker claimed would give mid-30 knot performance when new! This particular boat is at the higher end of that power range, being fitted with a pair of Detroit 550hp engines. We tested one with 435hp Caterpillars and saw 28 knots.
The owner’s is one of three cabins, all of which sleep two
Seakeeping
Powerboat racer Don Shead penned this one, so you can reasonably expect the hull to be biased toward seakeeping rather than accommodation.
Sunseeker 46 Manhattan specifications
Length: 46ft 11in (14.3m)
Beam: 14ft 5in (4.4m)
Draft: 3ft 7in (1.1m)
Displacement: 15 tonnes
Fuel capacity: 1,650 litres
Engines: Twin Detroit 550hp diesel engines
For sale: TBS Boats
Birchwood Crusader 400 Flybridge
Built: 1999
Price: £89,950
Now a footnote in the history of British leisure boat-building, Birchwood once stood toe-to-toe with Princess, Sunseeker and Fairline. Founded by furniture designer Ted Andrews in the late 1960s, he was originally just building a boat for his own use but requests from suitably impressed would-be customers saw him morph into boat building.
Named after his house (Birchwood Lodge), Birchwood Boat Company flourished, and by the late 1980s was building boats up to 57ft! Sadly, the recession a few years later meant the business foundered, but in 1997 it changed hands and a new product line was launched, including this model.
Interior
The aft cabin layout means that this is a seriously spacious 40-footer, with the accommodation reaching from stem to stern. Staggered vee berths in the bow keep the forward cabin short enough to allow a dinette on the lower deck opposite the galley and day heads (or the option of a third cabin in place of that dinette).
There’s a large comfortable saloon complete with lower helm position and steps aft down to the owner’s cabin beneath the raised aft deck, which features a separate toilet and shower.
The trim looks a little dated but could easily be reupholstered with a more modern fabric
Exterior
Offset steps link the saloon and aft deck, with GRP dodgers giving this area more protection than usual. Birchwood offered two layouts. A river-friendly set-up put the helm on the aft deck, keeping the air draft to a minimum, or you could have this flybridge version, with the helm and further seating over the saloon, creating far more external deck space.
Performance
Twin Volvo Penta or Mercruiser options were offered, all shaft drive, putting the engines beneath the saloon floor. This particular boat has Mercruiser D4.2L D-tronic motors, which should give about 20 knots.
The aft cabin does wonders for space and privacy on a boat of this size and style
Seakeeping
Other choices concerned the underwater profile, which was based on the outgoing 380 (itself utilising the previous T37 hull). Two options were offered, semi-displacement, which this boat is, under the Crusader banner, offering a more planted feel and better low-speed handling, or a planing hull which gave a higher top speed and was marketed as the Challenger model.
Birchwood Crusader 400 Flybridge specifications
Length: 41ft 1in (12.5m)
Beam: 12ft 8in (4.1m)
Draft: 3ft 0in (0.9m)
Displacement: 9 tonnes
Fuel capacity: 900 litres
Engines: Twin Mercruiser D4.2L Dtronic 250hp diesel engines
For sale: Burton Waters
Nelson 45
Built: 1974
Price: £82,500
I grew up sailing dinghies on the River Dart in the 1970s. The Dart is also home to the Britannia Royal Naval College, where officers are trained in the art of seamanship, navigation and boat handling, utilising a fleet of eight boats.
Since the 1960s, these were Nelson heavy-weather motor boats that were as familiar as Dartmouth Castle and often seen on exercise on the river and out at sea, usually with a new recruit bow and stern, each holding a wooden boat hook vertically. They were retired in 2021 in favour of a fleet of high-tech jet-drive vessels. One went to South West Marine Academy, others into private ownership, such as this one.
Interior
Prince William trained on one of these craft, as did King Charles, in the 1970s. It’s unlikely they would recognise the interior of this one as it has been refitted with a modern luxury interior that includes an en suite owner’s cabin and a separate saloon and galley.
The modern interior refit is at odds with its exterior but a real treat for liveaboard cruising
Exterior
But wonderfully, the outside is almost original, minus the large single-digit identification number that used to grace the transom and wheelhouse sides of each vessel back in the day (when the fleet were out on manoeuvres together, they looked uncannily like full-sized versions of those radio-controlled boats you used to see on ponds that you could operate for 10p). So there is a raised open-backed bridge amidships, traditional wooden cladding on the topsides, and of course that iconic navy blue hull and white superstructure.
Performance
Originally fitted with twin Gardner diesels, the Royal Navy re-engined these boats in 2014 with Perkins Sabre M130 diesel engines, which should give about 11-12 knots flat out for a cruise of about 7 knots.
The tastefully done forward cabin manages to look bright and modern but also timeless
Seakeeping
Designed by Peter Thorneycroft, the 45ft Nelson hull is legendary for its seakeeping and is used in many commercial applications, including customs launches, pilot boats and patrol boats as well as leisure boats. Semi-displacement and shaft drive, it is utterly rock solid and built for powering through the waves rather than bouncing over them.
Nelson 45 specifications
Length: 44ft 9in (13.6m)
Beam: 13ft 3in (4.0m)
Draft: 4ft 2in (1.3m)
Displacement: 12 tonnes
Fuel capacity: 680 litres
Engines: Twin Perkins Sabre M130 130hp diesel engines
For sale: Nicolle Associates
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