The Valhalla 46 Sport Yacht won the Fox Sports Best of Show award for boats under 60 feet at the 2026 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, and Viking Yachts reported 17 of its new Viking 70 Convertibles sold on the show's opening day. It is the second year running a Valhalla Sport Yacht has won the category, after the Valhalla 55 in 2025.
The award
The Azimut Grande 30M won Best of Show over 60 feet. The other finalists under 60 feet were the SOLACE 41CT, the Princess C48 and the Beneteau Gran Turismo 50, Boating Industry reported. The show drew more than 1,300 boats, including more than 50 debuts. FS1 airs a one-hour Best of Show special on 13 December at 9:30 a.m.
"This is a great honor for our team. We have an incredible group of boatbuilders in New Jersey," Viking president and CEO Pat Healey said, accepting the award, according to Yachting magazine.
What the Valhalla 46 is
Healey called it a "Bahamas Express", built for day runs to the islands. It is 46 feet 7 inches long and runs on triple Mercury V12 600-hp Verado outboards, with a reported top speed of more than 50 knots on a double-stepped hull designed by Michael Peters. The air-conditioned pilothouse opens up through powered side doors, a full-width retractable aft window and a sunroof. Below are two staterooms, a galley and a head with a separate shower. Viking builds it at its Viking Mullica plant in New Jersey and offers enclosed and open-pilothouse versions plus a Sportfish Edition.
Reading a Viking or Valhalla HIN
Viking explained its hull numbers in its own owner magazine (Valhalla, Summer 2023). The HIN "begins with VKY (or VBW if you are calling about a Valhalla center console) and is then five numbers, a letter and three more numbers." After the three letters, the next two digits give the Viking model, the third digit the series, and the next two the hull number within that series. The letter is the delivery month. Viking's customer service calls the HIN the most important piece of information to get started.
The Coast Guard's manufacturer register agrees on VKY, which it lists as Viking Yacht Co of New Gretna, New Jersey. It does not match on VBW. On 5 November the register listed VBW under a different company, Vandalize Boat Works of Miami, and a separate company called Valhalla in Fort Pierce, Florida, holds the code LQO. Any decoder that reads the first three characters from the Coast Guard register alone will name the wrong builder for a VBW Valhalla. If you're looking at a used Valhalla center console, trust the HIN, the title and Viking's own records together, not the code lookup on its own.
The free HIN decoder reads the build month and model year from the rest of the number, which works the same on any builder's hull. How to read a boat HIN covers each position, and the boat recall check lists any Coast Guard recall campaigns on record for a builder. On 5 November there were none under Viking or Valhalla.
Check the boat, not just the listing
Type the 12-character hull number from the transom. The decoder reads the builder, build month and model year, and the recall lookup lists any US Coast Guard recall campaign on record for that manufacturer. Free, no account.
