We aren’t ones for running competitions, however we’ve accidentally got one on the go via our socials so we thought we should post it up here also. It’s super simple, there is a photo below which shows a completed order from this week. All we need you to do is to tell us how many suits of sails there are in the photo.

There is no trickery, it really is that simple. There will be a prize, we’ve no idea what it is right now but it’ll be something fun. Competition closes next Wednesday, 27th Feb 2019 at midday UK time. One guess per person, just drop us an email or send your answer on a postcard to Tim Boatyard, Abersoch, LL53 7AR.

So we’re getting through our big orders in a slightly different way and as well as producing more than 50 suits of sails for these orders we have also fulfilled 35 of our 36 retail orders that we have taken this month. Not too shabby we think.

Anyhow we are having a day out tomorrow, early start for a 05.44 train to Manchester and then off to the Chinese visa place to get me a visa for a trip to China next month to visit the Joysway factory with Mike Weston & John Tushingham…..exciting times indeed.

Earlier last month we took a 7 hour round trip to do some IOM racing up on the moors at Weecher, it was forecast to be breezy and indeed it was, a healthy field turned out for a chilly day of superb racing. After a blistering start to the day I clearly had too much lunch and could have done with a snooze which led to a mediocre afternoon so I was pleased to finish in second spot, only missing top spot by two points. Tushy was PRO for the day and when he wasn’t getting in the way on the startline he took a couple of really nice shots of my boat, sporting a very nice, and quite quick,  number three suit by our own Soch Sails.

We also had couple of good days at West Lancs at the beginning of February and after a day of being Race Officer on Saturday I was stoked to place third in Sunday’s DF95 racing. Bad news however as there was an accident with my great Stars & Stripes boat which took a tumble out of the back of the car in a bid for freedom and has sustained some damage. Being as that is my original DF95 from waay back when I have treated myself to a new hull which I’ll be building up over the next couple of weeks along with a set of new rigs, having given all my old ones away in Dallas. As per usual it’ll be difficult to get away with a cheeky early startline, but I think it’ll look….well…..different!

So, the shop is open as usual for all your sail and accessory needs, we’ll have more rig bags online soon, production is in full swing and we’re back to blue bags which is cool, we like blue! We’ll also be launching a couple of new items in the shop over the next few weeks, mainly accessories for your DF yachts to keep them a shiny and bright.

Please see below for a small selection of the last weeks work.

So we’ve had a really busy January and we have cracked 100 orders for the month this morning, all of which will be sent out by the end of today. We’ll then be having a bit of a shutdown for the rest of this week and probably most of next week too.

We aren’t having any time off but we do have two large orders that we need to get out. The two orders total more than 70 suits of sails so we’ll need a couple of days but I hope that we’ll be manufacturing retail orders again by late next week.

As usual the shop will be open to take your orders but there will be a delay of up to a week in getting manufactured orders out of the door.

Here is a little selection of this months work.

Well it’s Christmas Eve and we’ve had a couple of days off with the family and have spent lots of quality time together, which is lovely.

It’s this time of year when we reflect on what’s we’ve achieved over the last 12 months and start to look forward to the next 12.

We still really enjoy making sails, producing sticker sets and all the other cool stuff that we do, however none of this would make any sense without you guys and gals out there who send us your orders for what we love to do.

Thank you, it means a lot that you’d choose Soch Sails to power your DF Racing yacht, or one of our sticker sets to pimp your boat.

We are looking forward to bringing you some more cool and useful products in 2019.

Enjoy your festive season with family and friends. Us, well we’re cranking up the bbq early tomorrow and will be smoking a brisket for a Texas bbq Christmas!

See you all in 2019.

Well the Post Office have spoken, we’ve done our last post run pre Christmas. we’ve only a couple of orders that didn’t make it but unfortunately we’ve run out of time.

We’ll continue manufacturing over the festive period but it is unlikely anything will be posted out until January.

I’ll have a more detailed update tomorrow whilst I’m nursing a hangover and eating stodge!

So we took a trip to Eastbourne a couple of weekends back, we sat by a very nice pond and chatted to some very nice people and concluded the DF racing TT series for 2018. Saturday we sailed DF95’s and I placed a very creditable 3rd out of the 36 skippers. Sunday saw me struggle to set a new (much less sinky) DF65 up and I finished 11th out of the 30 skippers. This gave me a solid 6th place in the overall TT standings for 2018.

199 looking racy! – Photo Dave Pickett

We now turn our attention to the upcoming DF95 Global event in Dallas. We are flying out later this week and are very much looking forward to meting lots of international DF95 skippers and racing at Lake Ray Hubbard. It is sure to be  a blast!

With this in mind, and the fact that it is also half term for Phoebe we have taken the decision that we will not be shipping any new orders until we return from Texas which will be week commencing the 12th November. This will allow us to concentrate on clearing our current orders and getting our gear all sorted and packed, ready for flying out on Friday.

If you just can’t wait to get your hands on some of our goodies then the guys at RC Yachts will have our full range of DF sails, rig bags and patches in stock. The guys at Happy Yachting in Sweden will also have our DF65 rig bags in stock and I’m hoping the Dragon Sailing North America will have our DF65 and DF95 sticker sets back in stock before the end of this week.

If, however you fancy something a little more bespoke then you can place an order with the shop but remember it won’t get looked at until we return on the 12th November.

That’s us signing out for the time being, however we’ll be sure to update you on how we are getting along.

So the boatyard side of things is winding down towards our closed season which is giving us a little more time to get some cool new stuff prototyped and ready to head out.

We have recently appointed a handy guy who is regularly able to sew stuff for us, he’s a really good friend of the yard, a full size sailmaker and a really nice guy who we have known for around 15 years. He sold his sailmaking business a few years back and stayed on to do a couple of days a week. He has some cool ideas about our products and we are keeping him busy at the moment sewing our popular sailbags for both DF65 and DF95.

DF Rig bags available here.

As well as those we are also sending him some new goodies that we hope to add to our product lineup in the near future, we are keen to make sure what we produce is right before we launch it and we reckon with Jon’s input we’ll have some interesting stuff for you soon.

Sailing wise we’ve done a bit recently, the DF65 Northerns were a little tedious with a rare Timmy mechanical issue before the first race when my winch packed up which was fixed and then my boat decided to leak quite a bit….no scratch that it pretty well sank in each of the last three races. I managed a mid fleet finish for the day which wasn’t amazing but it was ok given the conditions.

The day after saw me on the moors in Yorkshire with the Northern IOM fleet for the district championships. Not a class I sail as much as I should, but one that gives good racing. A good many names from the district were missing but there were still 16 boats starting the day in C rig and finishing in A rig. I was pretty stoked to take a third place finish on the day using my own IOM Soch sails.

Not much on the horizon until late October when we head to Eastbourne, swiftly followed by our “big trip” out to Dallas for the DF95 Global event, something that lots of us are looking forward to.

In the mean time we are still making lots of sails and shipping them all over the globe along with sticker sets and other goodies. When we’ve got some news on our new goodies we’ll let you know.

The shop is always open to take your order and with the yard being quieter our lead times for sails is usually between 24 and 48 hours plus shipping times. Sticker sets are usually fulfilled on the same day they are ordered as are rig bags and other goodies.

Here are some photos of  a little bit of our recent work.

Well we have finally got time to get a brief update on the website and it seems we have been silent for nearly two months. It has been a busy few months both with Soch Sails business and also the Boatyard that we run too. We have had some amazing weather here in the UK which just seemed like it was never going to end with temperatures of 30 plus degrees it has meant lots of boating for our customers here at the yard.

I’ve been busy with the Soch Sails side of things too, lots of orders sent out over the last few months to all corners of the globe keeping me quiet. We even installed some AC at Soch Sails HQ to keep us cool whilst making sails and other goodies.

So we are now mid way through August…almost… and we have decided to take a bit of a break before the Bank Holiday weekend. As of this afternoon we will be bang up to date with our orders but as of close of play on Tuesday we will be leaving on a roadtrip to see family over in Yorkshire for a week and we will not begin production again until Wednesday 22nd August. It will then be a short week due to the Bank Holiday which we need to get the yard ready for and then we’ll be back on it properly from the 28th August when production will return to normal.

As usual the shop will be open to take your orders and where we can get items out quickly we will continue to operate our normal short lead times.

In the meantime here are some photos of a few of the sails we have produced recently.

So the slow week at the beginning of the month turned out to be a super busy first half of the month which resulted in just one afternoon of boating goodness. So we are now at the tail end of the month and have just boxed off our latest orders, the weather is looking pretty sweet so we are ready to try again.

Hopefully we’ll get a couple of hours on Actual Boat each day for the next few days which will be nice.

Actual Boat in the actual sea!

Since we last updated our blog we have had a trip down to Milton Keynes for a weekend of DF Racing which was good fun, although a little frustrating on the Sunday as I spent the day fighting what turned out to be a deteriorating rudder servo, hey ho it was fun all the same.

Last weekend saw us take our newly finished IOM sails out on the racecourse, it was a tough racecourse too with lots and lots of previous National and World Champions competing, certainly a good place to find out whether what you’ve made is any good.

I placed mid fleet on Saturday which is pretty much where I expect to be in the UK IOM fleet. Sunday was lighter and tougher to concentrate due to the heat and being a little dusty from Saturday night and I didn’t fair too well. However our sails also had an outing on a brand new boat which was sailed into 11th spot on Saturday and 14th spot on Sunday, even winning an A fleet race. Positive comments about the sails on both days more than made up for my own Sunday performance.

A fleet start towards the end of Sunday racing.

So we’ll be around to make stuff when you guys order it, the shop will be open 24/7 to take those orders and in the meantime I’m off to spend some quality time out on the water.

This afternoons office view.

So we’ve gotten through half term and pinged out of the other end with just a couple of orders to complete, which is no mean feat with the weather we’ve had. We have a couple of commercial orders to fulfill this week and will be concentrating on getting these done as well as taking a little time to enjoy the great weather we’ve been having. “Actual Boat” has been recovered from winter storage and we’ll be spending a couple of afternoons this week out on the water.

This means that current sail order lead time will now be early next week for anything ordered from here on in…….unless it rains……or the boat breaks!

The shop is open as always to take your order and we can speak and mail whilst out and about if you have questions.