The 10th February 1979 was a big day in the life of Danish Yacht Firm X Yachts. Niels Jeppesen and Birger Hansen officially started up the company at precisely 8 am.
Lars Jeppesen, having recently finished his education as a boat builder was travelling for 3 months…
Niels and Birger simply couldn’t wait – they had to start up the project. So… on 10th February, the drawings for the racing sailboat of 7.8 metres were ready. And on this particular date, the two guys started producing the plug for the hull. They both looked forward to surprising Lars when he came back from his journey.
In this process, the plug was extended by 10 cm. The boat length was then 7.9 metres, and thereby creating its own name.
Niels and Birger had difficulties agreeing on a name for the boat, so they started by naming it X.
Lars Jeppesen read about the project after having picked up a poste restante letter in Cairo. In this letter, there was an enclosed press cutting from a local newspaper which stated that Niels, Birger and Lars had started up their own yard: “Nordsø Bådværft by Jeppesen and Hansen’s Boat Building Yard”.
On 9th May 1979, X-79 number 1 was launched in Aabenraa Denmark, in connection with a local boat show.
One month later, the yard participated with 2 X-79’s in “Sjælland Rundt” (a hardcore racing sail around the largest island of Denmark, Zealand with 3 different courses ranging from 216 to 276 nautical miles).
X-79 number 1 wins - a convincing victory with 1,500 participating boats. This is the beginning of the success of the X-79’s and indeed X-Yachts – approximately 500 X-79 boats were built and sold.
