10^th of February 2019 is a very special day.

On the 10^th of February 1979, Niels Jeppesen and Birger Hansen officially started up the company at 8 am.

Lars Jeppesen recently finished his education as boat builder; so in this period, he was travelling for 3 months’ period.

Niels and Birger simply couldn’t wait – they had to start up the project. So.. on 10^th of February, the drawings for the racing sail boat of 7.8 metres was ready. And on this particular date, the two guys start up producing the plug. They both looked forward to surprising Lars when he came back from his journey.

In this process, the plug was extended by 10 cm; Because with a boat length of 7.9 metres, the name creates itself.

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 is an enclosed press cutting from a local newspaper telling that Niels, Birger and Lars have started up their own yard: “Nordsø Bådværft by Jeppesen and Hansen’s Boat Building Yard”.

Already on 9^th May 1979, X-79 number 1 was launched in Aabenraa in connection with a local boat show.

One month later, the yard participates with 2 X-79’es in “Sjælland Rundt” – a hard core racing sail around the largest island of Denmark, Zealand – with 3 different courses ranging from 216 to 276 nautical miles.

X-79 no 1 wins a convincing victory (finishes 2 hours before no 2) on a short lane with 1,500 participating boats.

This is the beginning of the success of the X-79’s – more than 500 boats were built and sold.

Happy 40 years Anniversary!