64 Convertible

An enlarged 54, built to replace a whole size class

Viking built the first hull of its current 64 Convertible in 2021 and put her on the dock at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show that November, a clean-sheet enlargement of the 54 Convertible hull the yard had already proven and won awards with. The 64C effectively replaced two boats at once, taking over the 60-to-70-foot flagship slot Viking's earlier 60, 62 and 66-foot convertibles had held across three decades, and consolidating the range around a single hull the yard could build in volume rather than in small runs of several similar sizes.

The pace of delivery since has been fast even by Viking standards, with dealers reporting more than 40 hulls on the water within roughly two years of the debut. The model now anchors Viking's mid-size convertible range alongside the smaller 54 and larger 68. Naval architecture and hull engineering stayed in-house, developed with the yard's own computational fluid dynamics work, and construction follows the standard Viking process: vinylester resin-infused fiberglass with composite coring, built almost entirely, Viking says around 90 percent, inside the New Gretna campus rather than farmed out to subcontractors.

Four staterooms and a cockpit built to fish, not just cruise

Ten guests sleep across four ensuite staterooms, led by a full-beam master with a walk-around berth, and the boat carries three heads rather than the two more common at this length. The galley runs to stone countertops, two Sub-Zero refrigeration columns, a four-burner electric range and a microwave/convection oven, and the saloon opens onto a raised dinette and an L-shaped lounge, a genuinely livable interior for a boat that still fishes hard.

The cockpit is where the boat has to earn its keep, and Viking gave it 180 square feet, a 90-gallon pressurized transom livewell, twin insulated in-deck fishboxes and flush-mounted rod holders, with a mezzanine seating module that hides a bait freezer and drink coolers rather than taking up cockpit floor space. It is a real number, but not a class-leading one. Hatteras markets its rival GT65 Carolina on a 194-square-foot cockpit, and at least one owner comparing the two on The Hull Truth forum called the 64's cockpit a little small for a boat that size next to the Hatteras, even while praising the rest of the layout. For a buyer whose priority is pure fishing deck over interior volume, that trade-off is worth a dockside walk-through before signing.

Four of Viking's first seven 64 Convertibles were already fishing the White Marlin Open within a year of the model's debut, the fastest a new Viking flagship has ever reached the tournament dock.

Four engine choices and up to 42 knots

Viking sells the 64C with a genuine spread of propulsion, not a single power option with a performance badge on the transom. The standard engines are twin MAN V12 1550CRM diesels at 1,550 mhp each. Buyers can step up through CAT C32A (1,925 mhp) and CAT C32B (2,025 mhp), MAN's own V12 2000CRM (2,000 mhp), or the range-topping twin MTU 12V 2000 M96X at 2,002 mhp each, all turning through ZF 3050A gears at a 2.259:1 ratio. With the MTU pair fitted, sea trials by both Marlin and Power & Motoryacht clocked a 42-knot top speed and a comfortable cruise around 29 to 36 knots depending on load and sea state, figures the two magazines' independent tests agree on closely enough to trust.

None of that speed is free. At wide-open throttle the MTU-powered boat burns close to 200 gallons an hour, and even the most efficient cruise setting Marlin recorded, 29 knots at 1,800 rpm, still used 122 gallons an hour. Fuel capacity is 1,850 gallons standard, or 2,201 gallons with the optional tankage Viking now fits to most tournament-spec boats, a figure that matches both the yard's own factory specification sheet and Marlin's independent test exactly. Range is the one number nobody quite agrees on: Yachting magazine's test logged just over 380 nautical miles at a 36-knot, 152-gallon-an-hour cruise, Marlin measured 403 nm at a slower 29-knot cruise, and Power & Motoryacht's own trial suggested closer to 500 nm at 35 to 36 knots on the larger tank. The spread comes from different tank sizes and different cruise speeds on the test boats, not a real disagreement about the hull, but it means a buyer should ask a dealer for the range figure on the exact configuration being quoted rather than take any one published number as gospel.

Stability at anchor, and what actually keeps the lights on

A single Seakeeper 26 gyroscopic stabilizer, standard on the 64C, is what keeps the boat from rolling at anchor or on a drift bite, a spec confirmed independently by Power & Motoryacht's sea trial, Yachting magazine's test and Viking's own factory sheet. Hotel power comes from twin Onan generators in the 21 to 21.5 kW range, again cited consistently across the independent tests, and a Spot Zero reverse-osmosis watermaker handles fresh water, a detail that matters more than it sounds on a boat running multi-day tournament trips well offshore.

What Viking has not published for the 64C is a bow thruster spec. Dealer listings and factory literature confirm a joystick-controlled bow thruster is fitted, and helm photography shows the control head, but no test or spec sheet found here names the make, model or thrust output, which is a gap worth asking a selling dealer to fill in writing before survey. Climate control runs on a Dometic system sized for the interior volume, and the laundry center lives in the companionway rather than tucked into a cabin, a small layout choice reviewers have called out as a genuine convenience on long trips.

Straight into the tournament fleet

The 64C did not need years to prove itself on the circuit. Four of the first seven hulls built were already competing in the White Marlin Open in August 2022, less than a year after the model's Fort Lauderdale debut: Oil Slick and Big Oil in Nardo Grey with custom Palm Beach Towers, and Polarizer and Sea Flame in Viking's Blue Tone White. Sea Flame belonged to Rick Levinson, on his sixth Viking yacht, a repeat-buyer pattern that shows up again and again in Viking's owner base and is a large part of why the brand's resale market moves as fast as it does.

Working captains back up the tournament reputation with plainer language. Capt. Sean Dooley, running a 64C back from a Florida Keys tournament, told Yachting magazine he had made the trip at 80 percent power, 2,100 rpm and 36 knots, the kind of unremarkable-sounding number that actually says a lot: a loaded tournament boat holding a real cruise speed on the way home from a real event, not a controlled demo run. Owners writing on forums report similar territory once boats are a season or two into service, one long-term owner calling the 64C a hell of a boat while noting that MTU-powered examples run just under 40 knots once fully loaded with fuel, tackle and a tower's worth of electronics, and that keeping the boat at that performance level takes real maintenance discipline.

What it costs to buy and to keep

Viking does not publish a base price for the 64C, and dealers quote against the specific engine and equipment package a buyer chooses, which is standard practice at this end of the market but still leaves a buyer without a public number to start from. What is public is what boats actually change hands for: 2024 and 2025 hulls have been listed on YachtWorld and Boat Trader at $5.895 million to $5.95 million, and Motor Boat & Yachting priced the model at around $6m when it first showed the boat in 2021, so several years of inflation and options have moved the effective price only modestly. Because the model only entered production in 2022, there is no real gap yet between new and used pricing. The earliest hulls on the brokerage market today are asking close to current new-build prices, which is itself a useful data point about demand.

Running costs are the part nobody puts on a spec sheet. A commonly cited industry estimate puts a fully crewed 64C's annual budget, at around 250 hours of use a year, at $350,000 to $550,000, split roughly between fuel, a captain and mate, insurance and dockage, though that figure comes from a single published source and Viking itself does not publish an operating cost guide. Add the model's smaller-than-Hatteras cockpit volume and the tighter, if beautifully finished, engine room access that United Yacht Sales's own comparison of the class notes as a Viking trait against Hatteras's larger walk-in engine rooms, and the 64C's real weaknesses are less about the boat itself than about what a buyer gives up for its speed, finish and resale strength: cockpit space, running costs and, historically, a wait of up to a year for a new-build slot, though current dealer stock suggests that backlog has eased since 2022.

Who it is for: A tournament-focused owner who wants a genuinely fast, four-stateroom 60-footer with a proven hull and the deepest owner and resale network in American sportfishing, and who can accept a cockpit a shade smaller than the newest Hatteras rival in exchange for it.