82 Convertible

Two feet longer, no heavier, and a new propulsion system

The 82 Convertible replaces the 80 Convertible on the same basic recipe, two feet longer overall but, Viking says, no heavier than the boat it succeeds, a result the yard credits to advances in its fiberglass construction rather than any change in structure. CEO Pat Healey framed the goal at launch as building on a boat the sportfishing community had already proclaimed the most successful 80-footer ever, and the yard's own account of the project centers on what it calls the Advanced Viking Propulsion System: reworked struts and rudders engineered specifically for the new hull, which Healey has said is the single biggest change intended to improve real-world performance over the outgoing 80. Viking builds roughly 90 percent of the 82 in-house at its New Gretna, New Jersey facility, including the custom tuna towers supplied by its own Palm Beach Towers subsidiary; hull number 1 itself was finished in a Pamlico Blue gelcoat with a Palm Beach tower fitted as standard practice for the yard's own demo boats, rather than a one-off show finish.

The 82 comes in three configurations, open bridge, enclosed bridge and Sky Bridge, an open flybridge sitting above an enclosed lower helm, and buyers choose from five engine packages. The base option is a pair of Caterpillar C32A diesels at around 1,925 mhp each; the performance option, and the one most tournament boats are ordered with, is a pair of MTU 16V2000 M96L units at 2,635 hp each, giving Viking's demo boat and most customer hulls their headline numbers. HMY Yachts delivered the first enclosed-bridge 82, hull number four, in around November 2024, with two more enclosed-bridge hulls already under construction behind it; that version carries a one-piece forward windshield and a raised, wraparound electronics pod holding up to five multifunction displays, a layout Viking carried over and refined from the outgoing 80 Convertible's own enclosed bridge rather than designing from scratch.

What the tested numbers actually show

Marlin magazine's boat test of the MTU-powered 82 recorded a two-way average of 31 knots at 1,800 rpm burning 153 gallons an hour, rising to 36.7 knots at 2,100 rpm and 206 gph, and a top speed of 41.7 knots with 14 people aboard, 2,500 gallons of fuel and a full load of tournament tackle and spares. Viking's own literature quotes a slightly higher ceiling of 42-plus knots in a lighter tournament trim, which is consistent with the tested figure once the extra weight of that test's fuel and crew load is accounted for rather than a separate, unverified claim.

Standard equipment on the tested boat included a Seakeeper SK40 gyroscopic stabilizer, twin 32 kW Kohler generators, VEEM five-blade propellers through ZF 3070A gears at a 2.750:1 ratio, and two 6-ton Dometic chilled-water air conditioning units with independent zone control. The 229-square-foot teak cockpit carries a Release Marine Trillion Series fighting chair, a transom box that doubles as a livewell, an in-deck portside fish box, a mezzanine storage box and two Eskimo ice chippers, and the companionway rod locker holds 20 outfits, a genuinely serious tournament-grade cockpit rather than a cruiser's afterthought.

Viking's own demo boat tallied 40 white marlin releases in its first tournament season, on the boat that replaced what captains had already called the most successful 80-foot sportfish ever built.

A tournament record built in its first season

Viking's own demo boat spent the summer and fall of 2024 on the East Coast tournament circuit straight out of its Atlantic City dealer debut, starting at the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament in Morehead City, where the 82 Demo Team released white marlin and sailfish in its very first outing. Viking has since reported the demo boat tallying 40 white marlin releases across the season, a level of on-water proof most brand-new flagship models do not get within their first year of existence.

Layout-wise the 82 sleeps up to ten guests across a full-beam master suite and four further cabins, each with its own head and a generously sized shower stall, a genuinely five-star arrangement for a boat whose primary job is still fishing hard offshore. The flybridge carries full-width wings, an 8-inch teak deck and four flush-mounted 17-inch displays in a custom Release Marine helm pod with single-lever controls, so the boat is built to be run and fished from up top as much as from the cockpit.

The real running cost, and what Viking has not published

None of the trade coverage of the 82's launch mentions a downside, which is itself worth flagging: sportfishing owner forums including The Hull Truth are blunter about what a boat like this actually costs to run, describing Viking convertibles in general as expensive to operate because of heavy fuel consumption, commonly cited at somewhere between 0.25 and 0.5 nautical miles per gallon depending on speed, plus maintenance that gets expensive fast unless an owner can service the engines and generators personally. At 153 to 206 gallons an hour cruising, per Marlin's own tested figures, that is not a marginal running cost on a boat this size, it is the central fact of owning one.

Viking's own material and every dealer listing found for the 82 do not state a fuel tank capacity consistently: some cite just under 2,700 US gallons, others over 3,300, a gap this profile could not resolve to a single authoritative figure and is flagging rather than guessing at. The 9,670,000 dollar base price was explicitly fixed only through the end of 2024, so a 2026 order should be priced fresh with a dealer rather than assumed to match that figure, and as a model not yet two years old there is no multi-year resale or reliability record yet, only the one tournament season and Viking's own launch-era testing.

Para quién es: A tournament owner-operator or captain who wants Viking's current flagship convertible, with the fuel budget and maintenance appetite that a 150-plus-gallon-an-hour cruising speed and a brand-new model's unproven long-term ownership record both demand.