VIGGO C 10 OFFSHORE

If you want to get from A to B quickly, safely and in almost any weather, this 60-knot adventure boat is in league of its own

- Hugo Andreae

The second you set eyes on the Viggo C10, it’s evident that this is not your typical sports cruiser. From its untreated aluminium construction to its slender deep-vee hull and spartan facilities, it seems to defy just about every design trend going. That’s because Viggo is not particularly fussed about anything as ephemeral as design trends, its primary interest is in building boats that get you from A to B quickly, safely, reliably and comfortably year after year with the minimum of fuss and whatever the weather. Everything else takes second billing, even cost.

It’s a brave call in a marketplace that seems to prioritise luxury, space and bang for buck over almost everything else, but Viggo isn’t chasing mass market numbers. It only builds around 30 craft a year at its facility in Öregrund, Sweden, and each one is hand made to order. The vast majority of those orders are for the 27ft X8 and C8 models. The 36ft C10 Offshore is an altogether rarer beast, not least because it takes 2,700 man hours to build, and costs around £484,000 inc VAT for a sensibly specced model with twin 300hp Mercury V8s. For the full experience, however, you need to upgrade to twin 400hp or even 500hp supercharged V10s. One thousand horsepower is a lot of grunt in a boat weighing just 4,500kg – almost three tonnes less than a Wellcraft 355 – but if any boat can handle it the C10 can.

Our test boat is actually 18 months old (a testament to how well it ages) and therefore has the slightly older 450R V8s for a combined output of a ‘mere’ 900hp!