X-Yachts Gold Cup 2017 is now officially over for another year. The teams should now be back safely at home, sharing their fond memories of what was a great event, with their family and friends.
The Royal Danish Yacht Club in Skovshoved Harbour did not disappoint, it really was the perfect venue. It once again offered all the facilities needed to host an event of this scale and being in close proximity to the impressive capital city of Copenhagen, it had so much to offer the sailors.
It is the fourth time that the Royal Danish Yacht Club has hosted the X-Yachts Gold Cup in Copenhagen and all previous years there has been a sun and perfect wind for the sailors. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for this year did not look promising before the event. However, at the opening ceremony the commodore of the Royal Danish Yacht Club, Lars Ive, revealed that he had a direct line to the weather gods and promised – a bit courageously – great weather for the following days. The Royal Danish Yacht Club’s commodore must have the right connections, because the sailors were served with both wind and sun every day of the Gold Cup.
“It has been a great pleasure to host the X-Yachts Gold Cup again this year and house so many X-Yachts owners, both from our own club and guests. There is an absolutely unique atmosphere both on water and land and it is wonderful to witness”, Lars Ive, commodore of the Royal Danish Yacht Club.
The final races were completed on the Saturday and the prize giving ceremony followed. The party then wrapped up some amazing days of competition, socializing and sharing the passion for the X-Yachts.
We now must wait until 2019 for the next Gold Cup. This will be something of great excitement for all X-Yachts enthusiasts as, Niels Jeppsen X-Yachts’ CEO, promised at the prize giving ceremony that X-Yachts have great plans for the Gold Cup in 2019, where the yard will celebrate it’s 40th anniversary.
Overall Results
The X-35 World Championships
In the X-35 World Championships, one team sailed a sublime series and won the gold medal even before the last race. The winning team was Swedish ‘Joanna’ with Jacob Jacobsen at the helm. “We are so happy to have won this year! We became fourth at our last World Cup in 2015, so it’s such a fantastic feeling that the training and consistency of the team has payed off”, said Jacob Jacobsen. The silver went to the Danish ‘Foxy Lady’ (Jette Dalegaard) and the bronze to Swedish ‘Escape’ (Mats Rimmö).
The Family Class
The winner of Saturday’s race and overall winner of the Family Class was Danish ‘XL’ with Birger Hansen as helm. The second place went to the Danish ‘X-One’ (Ib Kunøe), with Niels Jeppsen, X-Yachts founder and CEO on board. In third place came Danish ‘Xtravaganza’ (Kai Hoffmann).
To the great amusement of all the participants at the Gold Cup’s award ceremony, Niels admitted in his speech (with glint in his eye) that it was a little hard to be beaten by Birger, his former partner – with only 18 seconds between them.
The Sports Classes
In Sports Class A and B, it was only a few points that decided who would win. In Sports Class A the winner was German ‘Quattro’ (Klaus-Peter Boock), second place went to Danish ‘Mille’ (Kim Rasmussen) and Swiss ‘Morning Breeze’ (Bruno Frank) came third.
Sports Class B was won by Danish ‘Stony’ (Steen Toftebjerg), Danish ‘X4Box’ (Henrik Jørgensen) came second and Swedish ‘Veronix’ (Stephan Bertntsson) took third place.
For the first time at an X-Yachts Gold Cup four of the newly launched X4³’s participated and received a warm welcome from the sailors. The new X-Yachts model merges the Xc and Xp models combining performance, style and luxury.
Three X4³’s took part in the Family Class, two of which came 2nd and 3rd overall, and one team participated in the Sports Class B, also getting a great result, coming 2nd overall. The feedback from the owners and crew on the dock in Skovshoved marina was that, “the boat is easy to handle”, “feels like a dinghy”, “is smooth to work with for the crew”, and “delivers both when it comes to racing and cruising”.
The X4³ was launched in summer 2016 and has already been nominated as European Yacht of the Year, and won Cruisings World’s ‘Best full-sized Cruiser Under 50ft’ and Hiswas ‘Sailing Boat of the Year 2017’.