After a bit of a delay we’ve had a batch of our ever so lovely DF rig bags come through. Ten of each, get them while they are here as there will be another delay with the next batch. These are slightly heavier weight and are a dark blue…very nice.

Clicky here to get one bagged!

Wowsers, how has April arrived so quickly? We’ve been busy bees over here in our little corner of North Wales. Our March was as busy as every and we produced and shipped over 120 suits of DF & IOM sails to locations all over the world with only two fails due to FPS (fat postie syndrome). So a productive month indeed on the sailmaking front.

Other parts of the business were also good with our ever popular DF sticker sets heading worldwide along with deck patches, keel patches and sail numbers for all classes. Our other accessories such as rig bags and transmitter covers are a little delayed at the moment. Having had to swap our sewing supplier due to illness we are now in a queue with our stuff. The sailmaker had Easter deadlines that didn’t involve us unfortunately so we are waiting for our next delivery of products, most of which will be shipped directly to our friends at RC Yachts. On the bright side of this our sailmaker has suggested some production streamlining which should allow us to keep better stock of these accessories in the future.

We had another delivery of RC Laser boats and parts and are now well on top of our stocking in this department after last years mis step on my part. We are expecting a delivery of battery chargers mid next week which will mean everything we sell for the RC Laser will be once again available from us.

We’ve been in our Global HQ at the boatyard for six years now and over that time we have done lots of sailmaking and other fun projects and we’ve added more and more stock to the shed. It seems that this has begun to take its toll on the container floor and it is now time to think about replacing the floor. No mean feat but something that needs some attention reasonably soon. It is our intention to have a weeks shutdown at some point in the next six weeks so that we can get this job done. this will mean there will be no production for a week whilst the works are taking place.

Other than that there’s not much to report, shipping times seem reasonable to all worldwide locations which is good news all round. The shop is open 247 to take an order and we’ll fulfil that order just as soon as we can. Current lead times are a week or less for sails. Sticker sets, deck patches, sail numbers and RC Laser parts are usually shipped within 24 hours. RC Laser boat packages are shipped within a week of order.

We have decided to drop our early model V1 – V5 DF65 sticker sets from our catalogue. We were getting less and less call for them and with our computer having crapped its pants we can’t now recover the files from the defunct hard drive. We might have the odd set left and when I’ve cleared out the drawers I’ll put what we have into the clearance section.

Here’s a selection of sails we made in March.

Hello again, I hope you are all keeping well. We’ve been quite busy over the last month with some large trade orders taking our time up as well as a varied selection of general orders for all our products heading all over the world.

Our RC Laser stock has been worked through and will be replenished late next week with another order. I’m pleased to report that our suppliers have realised that the RC Laser hull is indeed a spare part and I have ordered a couple for stock so you can rehull your boat is you need to without buying a whole new boat. General RC Laser stock is good, we’ve got sails in stock and more on the way, Parts are all good too, I misjudged the popularity of the blue bags so have ordered some more of those too.

Our DF Sails continue to be popular and are heading all around the world to new skippers and also skippers who have supported our brand for some time. We have decided to discontinue our Stealth Sails for DF65. There hasn’t been the uptake that we expected when we relaunched them six months ago and whenever people have ordered them we always seem to be out of stock of the correct colour. The price of importing the material has made the sails more and more expensive so we’ve sadly decided to drop them from our lineup. Our IOM sail offering is growing in popularity and we’ve seen a marked increase in skippers trying our sails. Feedback seems to be positive.

Accessories are perhaps where we lack a little, our current machinist is currently unwell and we are hoping to engage a replacement this week which will hopefully see us back in production with all that we need.

Other than toy boat stuff it’s that time of year where the big boatyard comes back to life so if there is a short delay in us getting your order away then that’s probably the reason why. Our current lead times are good with DF sails shipping within a week or less, IOM sails are between one and two weeks with stickers, accessories and RC Laser parts usually shipped within 24 – 48 hours. RC Laser boat packages are built to order and are usually a week or so lead time.

Next week we move to five days a week so we’ll be manufacturing but not shipping on Fridays from now on. Remember that the shop is open 247 to take your order and if you need something that you don’t see on the shop please just get in touch and we’ll do our best to help.

Our plain vanilla year continues with no drama at all just yet and certainly nothing on the scale of last year!

Check out some of our recent work below.

I’m in hospital on Friday 9th and Monday 12th February so there will be no orders leaving the workshop on those two days.

As much as we can fulfil will be shipped out on Tuesday 13th. Apologies for the delay.

Just like that we are now restocked on all our RC Laser bits and bobs. From a full boat to a keel pin and spring we have it all at hand. Parts and sails orders will be shipped same or next day depending on time of order, boats are built to order and can take a week or so to ship after ordering.

Once again, apologies for the delay in sorting this, I dropped the ball on it but we’re good to go once again.

We’ve just had the customs clearance on our RC Laser shipment which means it will be with us imminently and that is good news. I have updated the shop with the incoming stock and it can be purchased now for shipment next week.

Morning Folks, I’ve just been reviewing last years posts and it seems that we didn’t really post very much at all from May onwards. There were a few reasons for this, the first being the house rebuild which took over a little bit towards our deadline of September, then late October.

I also had my mum and dad to deal with which took even more time than the house build. As you’ll know we lost dad at the end of September after a really rubbish year for him having become ill in the USA whilst on holiday early in 2023. We were heartened by the fact he had 76 years of fantastic life and was only ill for a relatively short period of time before passing. This has left mum on her own and we’ve been making sure she is coping. As it turns out she has much more of a social life than I do and her time is packed full of things to do and people to see.

All of the above served to take much of my focus away from both the boatyard and Soch Sails and both businesses took a bit of a back seat whist making sure we had somewhere to live and making sure mum was ok. Simon continued to make sails for us and has turned into a valuable member of the team for both businesses. Nicko and Pete kept the boatyard running well too and I can’t thank all three of them enough for sticking at it.

So we’re now into 2024 which I’m hoping will be as boring as years come and it is time to turn my attention back to Soch Sails. Our inventory isn’t huge, we struggle to keep stock of popular accessories as we are forever manufacturing and shipping them to our friends at RC Yachts who often have stock of these items if we don’t.

Sails are always made to order which is the way it has always been and will continue to be, manufacturing time depends on our workloads, however we aim to get customer orders of DF sails out of the door within 7 working days. We are often quicker than this, and sometimes a little slower such as after Christmas where we’d had a month off. We have also reintroduced our Stealth sails for DF65 in A plus size only.

Sticker sets, sail numbers and deck patches for all classes are usually manufactured and shipped within one or two working days.

The one thing that I did drop the ball with last year was the RC Laser and the bits that go with it. There aren’t any complex excuses it was just something that I meant to do repeatedly and never got round to. I have now placed an order with our supplier and I am expecting to be restocked with boats and parts by early February.

So that’s about it really, we had a rubbish year last year and now we’ll have a better one where I might get to go sailing more than twice. I’m away to West Lancs YC this weekend to take part in the first two rounds of the UK DF TT series, I’m PRO on Saturday but look forward to some DF95 racing on Sunday. I haven’t entered this year’s DF65 Global Championship which I’m a bit sad about but having futtered along at the back of the DF95 fleet at last year’s Globals I don’t feel that I’m really in a position to go and compete properly. It also seems to be a very Swedish heavy event with other nations not being very well represented for one reason or another. so I’ll concentrate on remembering how to radio sail and race for this year as there is plenty to go at with the classes I sail.

As ever, the shop is open 247 to take your order, we are working 4 day weeks as it is the winter and the workshop is open Monday – Thursday. Thanks for your continued support over the last 12 months, your messages have meant a lot to us.

Meantime here are some pictures of sails we have manufactured and shipped recently.

We had a good day on Monday and got quite a few orders out from our Christmas backlog. we had hoped to continue this yesterday and today however it seems our local post office is broken and can’t accept any post. This happened yesterday and it was supposed to be fixed today. Apparently the man isn’t fixing it until tomorrow, Thursday.

On that basis we will attempt to ship as much of the remaining backlog tomorrow.

Apologies, normal service will be resumed tomorrow…hopefully!

With last year being a bit rubbish and having moved back into the house we decided to take a bit of an extended break over Christmas and New Year. It’s been very lovely but it’s time to get back to work.

We’ll be back in the workshop on Monday 8th January when we will start to get on with the orders that have come in over the period.

Hopefully this year will be somewhat less traumatic!

Now then folks, we’ve been back in the house for a few weeks now which is absolute bliss. I’ve got a few things just to finish off and the weather is set fair for a couple of days now and I’m going to take advantage of it and get some jobs done.

As a consequence of this there will be no shipping until Thursday when we’ll ship almost all of our orders in one hit. Once we’ve done that we’ll be back to normal and there will be some news to post about upcoming offers.

I also went racing at the weekend for the first time since May, had a blast, didn’t do overly well but started to remember how to do it at the end of day two when I won the last race of the season in the DF Racing UK TT Series. Not a bad way to end what has been a pretty rubbish sailing year.

More news soon.