X-Yachts

X-Yachts has built performance yachts in Haderslev, Denmark since 1979, when the brothers Niels and Lars Jeppesen and Birger Hansen launched a quarter-tonner named like a licence plate: X-79, for 7.9 metres and the founding year. Three decades of IOR and IMS silverware taught the yard one durable habit, counting loads honestly, and gave every X its signature: a hot-galvanised steel keel frame laminated into the hull, carried since 1981. The founders have since left the ownership; the majority owner since 2012 is Ib Kunøe's Consolidated Holdings, and the yard has passed six thousand hulls.

In 2008 the racing yard made its first move into pure bluewater cruising with the Xc line, opened by the Xc 45: European Yacht of the Year 2009 and, in its second generation, Cruising World's best full-size cruiser under 50 feet. The line ran to some 300 boats before giving way to a new generation of designs, and on the used market an Xc still holds its price the way few production yachts do.