Afternoon Folks, hope you’re all well. We are getting along just fine and are heading into our big boatyard winter period which is a nice time of year for us. Healthwise Tim is good and in fine form, he is having some immunotherapy to compliment his kidney removal and currently that isn’t causing him too many issues.

Soch Sails wise we are as busy as ever, supplying sails, sticker sets and all of our other goodies to all corners of the globe. The USA seems to have sorted itself out postage wise, the duty is applied at the checkout and varies depending on the country of origin of the goodies you’re purchasing. Most of our goodies are manufactured in the UK so only attract a 10% duty charge.

We have had a trip out to the DF95 Nationals where, unfortunately Tim’s eyes let him down and there wasn’t a lot of racing for him to do. Always good to see a number of skippers using our sails, stickers and accessories at events, and this one was no exception with skippers up and down the fleet flying the Soch flag.

We have had word that there has been a delivery of RC Laser boats and parts with our supplier and we will be confirming our latest order early next week with them. I would imagine this will see a delivery sometime before the end of this month which is somewhat of a relief as we are nearly out of most items now.

In other news we are in the final weeks of an acquisition of a new to us business. It’s been a long time in the making but at the beginning of November we will be taking over RC Yachts, the best and most well stocked suppliers globally of the very successful DF65 and DF95 yachts spares and accessories. We have a container order in progress with Joysway which should find us in late November to restock the items we are purchasing from Mike. Not much will change in terms of the running of the business other than that there will be a short shutdown period to facilitate the change of location from Kent to North Wales. This will be well documented on the RC Yachts socials.

Soch Sails will continue as a separate entity with the webshop operating as usual and orders being fulfilled in our usual timely fashion. Again, outwardly nothing will change and we look forward to continuing to supply you with all your sail and accessory needs for radio sailing. We may need to scale down production of our time consuming IOM sails for a period of time but the rest of the catalogue should remain unchanged.

As ever the shop remains open to take your order www.sochsails.online

Meantime here are some of the sails we have made recently.

For all our lovely US customers we can now take orders for our products through the website once again. Our shop providers have added functionality to add a new market to the shop which is USA specific. Products with a country of origin of the UK will have a 10% duty attached to them so on a 20 buck set of stickers you’ll be charged 22 bucks. In reality this means that 99% of our products will be charged at this rate. If you buy a DF rig kit from us the duty will jump to nearly 50% so it might be worth searching out home soil stock that hasn’t been subjected to this duty yet. I would assume US retailers will have to amend prices when they next have a delivery.

There is a possibility that this will actually speed up US deliveries a little as they will be shipped duty paid and shouldn’t (all being well) get hung up in customs halls. We are also investigating the option of shipping to some European countries in the same manner which will streamline shipping to these countries too. This may take a week to figure out!

Meantime, USA customers, please feel free to order from us as usual.

Check out the online shop by clicking here.

As per all our UK sailmaking colleagues we have had to suspend shipping to the USA currently due to the confusion and lack of information on how to best sort out the addition of tariff and duty to your USA orders. We are currently working hard with our online shop partners and our delivery partners to resolve this to a best case scenario.

It might take a few days to get it sorted but it may also be beneficial to our European customers too as our delivery partners are now offering Delivery Duty Paid (DDP) services which will streamline deliveries to other locations.

Please bear with us whilst we sort this out.

After the last delay with the container it seems there are now further delays with RC Laser products reaching us.

Apparently there are now no boats in stock as well as bags and A sails which, after such a period, is a little disappointing. Whilst we love the RC Laser, and all that it is, it does seem that supply is perhaps not as reliable as it used to be which is a shame as there is some renewed enthusiasm for the class here in the UK.

We’ll keep you posted and let you know when we can expect stock.

We were expecting to have a restock of A sails and blue carry bags by now but have just heard from our supplier that they have not yet had the container delivered to them. This means we still have no date for our stock arriving here in the UK. Once the parts arrive with our supplier we will get them over here as quick as we can which will get us restocked with the bits we are running low on or out of, including boats. Apologies but this is out of our hands. Anyhow, at least the sun is shining!

Tim is in hospital today for some treatment but should be back in the office tomorrow to catch up on the weekends orders.

Just a quick note to say that Tim is back to work for a couple of hours today and has started shipping the backlog of orders. We’ve shifted nearly half the orders today and should have the rest shipped by the end of the week all being well. A couple of hours is plenty just at the minute but the workshop has been busy manufacturing the orders as they have come in so they just need checking, packing and shipping.

Thanks for your patience whilst Tim has been away but orders placed from here on should be fulfilled well within our usual timescales.

Surgery went well and Tim is making a good recovery but he is struggling to do nothing!

We’ve just done our last post run for a few weeks if you had an order in with us it has been shipped. Tim is off to hospital tomorrow, Simon will be in the workshop whilst Tim is away and your orders will be manufactured. They will be shipped just as soon as Tim returns which should be before the end of April.

Apologies for any inconvenience but I can assure you it’s more inconvenient for me!

Catch you all on the other side.

We spent the weekend at work checking the interwebs for up to date scores from the UK DF65 Nationals. No surprises that Tushy won it and it was nice to see some fresh names up there too. We used our time well and got plenty of orders ready to ship and nearly completed another trade order for our friends at RC Yachts which will see them restocked very soon.

Our next RC Laser order is confirmed but there will be some shortages, there will be no more of the following items until July at the earliest. A sails, blue carry bags, pot lids, mast tubes and rubber switch covers. Some of these items are currently in stock but once sold out they will become unavailable until July. This means our RC Laser racer and olympic packs will also be unavailable until this time too. Everything else will remain in stock.

We also have some limited stock of our DF95 four pocket rig bags. We have more in production along with some DF65 ones too. If you want one get them here.

On a personal note I’m away to London for my op on the 9th April which will see me out of action for at least two weeks. Simon will man the workshop and manufacture orders as they come in but he cannot be trusted to carry out the postage element. As such there will be a last post on the 8th April and then nothing until I return. I hope to be back in the office by the end of April when I’ll be able to ship out orders that are ready to go. This is somewhat dependant on my recovery.

Other than that, the weather has perked up and it has gotten a little warmer which is great news!

The shop is open 247 to take your order, click here to take a look.

I’m back in the workshop today so if you’ve ordered it it should be out of the door and on it’s way to you over the next day or two.

We have some RC Laser shortages which you should be aware of, the A sail and blue carry bag are out of stock with our distributor and they are not expecting stock until June at the earliest. This leaves us without these items for the time being. We have been through our inventory and have restocked some items. There is also an order in the pipeline and this may see other items unavailable and we’ll keep you posted.

Other than that it’s all good, we are starting to get the big boatyard ready for the 2025 season which will hopefully involve some sunshine one way or another. I have to head to London again to have a small operation sometime in the next month but the workshop will remain open as will the shop. The op will curtail some of my 2025 sailing plans but hey ho we should be able to get on again soon enough.

We also took a trip out to the Nuremberg toy fair at the end of January to see the Joysway team and celebrate my birthday. As always it was a fun trip that saw a couple of hangovers develop over the few days we were away. It was good to see the new versions of the two DF yachts and some of the other developments that Joysway are making to their product lineup.

As usual the workshop is busy with sails and accessories heading out across the globe.

Other than that there is no ground breaking news from us just the same old good service and quality products that we’ve been supplying now for very nearly ten years.

As ever, the shop is open to take your order.