X-Yachts Gold Cup 2017 - Thursday 13th July

The waters outside Copenhagen delivered the best sailing conditions sailors can wish for; sun and 15-20 knots with shifts to play with. 400 passionate X-Yachts sailors spread over four fleets got the regatta well started with three races for the sports classes and a long distance race for the family class.

Shifty winds and shifty results

The X-Yachts sailors racing close to land were exposed to the famous phenomena outside Skovshoved Harbor namely the shifty, puffy wind conditions. The sailors had shifts of 30-40 degrees and had to stay aware of the wind angles all day long.

Probably due to the shifty conditions we also saw different winners of the races. In Sports Class A the three races were won by the German crew Quattro (helm: Klaus-Peter Boock), the Danish Mille (helmed by Kim Rasmussen) and again by the German Quattro. In Sports Class B the X4Box (helm: Henrik Jørgensen), Bajazzo (helm: Sven Zoller) and Veronix (helm: Stephen Berntsson) distributed the race wins between them.

Family Class around Øresund

The Family Class took themselves a long and comfortable race around Øresund where the three Danish Yachts Xc-L (helmed by Birger Hansen) got the first spot, X-One (helm: Ib Kunøe) the second spot and Xpedition came in on third – only a few minutes dividing the teams after the corrected finish time.

X-35 World Championships on day two

The X-35s marked out the field for the rest of the X-Yachts by starting their World Championships yesterday. So the fleet has managed to get six races in and the Swedish team Joanna (SWE 122) helmed by Jacob Jacobsen is in the lead for the second day in a row.

Collision between two X-35

The races are close and in the aim for the win the sailors push the boats to the limit. Unfortunately, a bit too far for two of the X-35 yachts, who are racing for the World Championships title. NOR 191 and SWE 167 had a t-bone incident on a port/starboard situation.

NOR 191 Xarabi, before the collision.

”We were about 4-5 boats, who were very close at the top mark. We were on port tack and we couldn’t bear off for the Norwegians in the wind puff,” says helmsman from the Swedish team Johan Rockström. His opponent from the Norwegian team Amund Hosoien replies sympathetically: “There are no hard feelings, this can happen in close racing” and the two helms enjoy the social atmosphere together afterwards.

Left: Johan Rockström, Right: Amind Hosoien

The Norwegian team are now looking for a X-35 to rent for the rest of the season.