X-Yachting - X-Yachts

Cruising technology:
Perfect balance
The award-winning Xc range capitalises on X-Yachts’ many decades
of design experience. We find out the secrets of creating the
perfect cruising yacht...
Ease of sail handling is key to enjoyable cruising when sailing with just one or two crew.
108 X-YACHTING 2012
Designing a successful cruising yacht
is all about balance. Many of the
features which make life aboard
enjoyable – spacious cabins, modcons,
the ability to moor in picture-perfect
shallow anchorages – are at odds with creating
a responsive sailing yacht. Done carelessly,
adding width for extra living space can make
light winds performance seem sluggish, a
short keel can hamper upwind sailing, and too
many heavy additions can produce a yacht
that feels cumbersome.
However, when the Xc 45 was awarded the
European Yacht of the Year prize for luxury
cruisers in 2009 it proved that X-Yachts had
not fallen into any of these traps. Then the
Xc 38 claimed the same category this year -
demonstrating that when it comes to designing
cruising yachts, X-Yachts are ahead of the game.
“The Xcruising range came to the market as
a natural response to a growing share of our
many repeat clients from three decades, who
had ‘outgrown’ our Xperformance models
but still wished to stay loyal to the brand,”
explains Niels Jeppesen, Director of Design.
“The core values of the X-Yachts they had
owned in the past were still absolutely key:
namely trustworthy and strongly built, yet
offering the ultimate sailing experience we
call ‘pure sailing pleasure’. They also wanted
to own a yacht with a striking and timeless
design. We delivered on all fronts.”
Safety first
At the structural heart of the Xc range is the
X-Yachts steel frame. The great advantage of
the steel frame is that all keel, mast compression
and grounding loads are ‘contained’ within it –
that gives room to design an interior without
compromise, and offers owners complete
peace of mind when sailing in unfamiliar
shallow waters.
That’s not to say the Xc models don’t
feature imaginative technical solutions – with
the added challenge that many structures
need to remain hidden for an elegant interior.
One example is the chainplates on the Xc 38:
these are fixed to a reinforced composite box
which attaches to the hull and hull liner behind
the seat backs, capable of taking the full rig
load of large overlapping genoas.