So today we are taking a trip up to Fleetwood to watch the Yachting Monthly Cup which is an amazing event with heaps of history and has been sailed s part of the Vane A Nationals for many years.

I’m also collecting a test vehicle for our panelled sails experiments, I’m quite excited about this boat as it is quite special for a number of reasons, more on that in another post I think.

As well as all that we are racing our DF65 at the Fleetwood club night this evening which should be fun and might see some of the vane sailors have a go!

We had an early start today and by 0800 we’d sorted a suit of sails for delivery to Fleetwood this afternoon and a suit of sails to go out with a DF65 as a birthday present,  just need to book  hotel and get the other 6 orders posted and I’ll be on my way!

Early bird specials!

So here it is, our Soch Sails DF65 Rig Building Guide. We think it is the simplest yet most comprehensive guide to building a DF65 rig. It’s taken us a couple of late nights to put together and we’re happy that it covers all the bases when you build a new rig for your DF65.  Take a look on our DF65 rig kit page where you’ll find a link to the DF65 rig building guide.

So we got a mail from a customer in Italy who bought a set of our Hull & Deck Sticker sets along with a couple of graphics for his boat.  He also sent us a photo of the job mid way through and as you can see he has made a substitution and has a nice glass of Italian white wine instead of a beer!

Nice to see people following our instructions…speaking of which our rig kit guide is nearly finished and ready for you guys.  Hopefully over the weekend or very early next week.

Ever mindful that people crave something extra from their purchases these days and in an age where information is pretty easy to come by we started to look about the place for a good DF65 rig building guide, low and behold we can’t find many good ones and those that are out there don’t tend to cover the mast and boom building tasks, more the putting together of the kit supplied rigs.

So we started our own “Soch Sails” rig building guide. It comes from over 2.5 years of building DF65 rig kits, from the first ones that hit the shops to those supplied today in completely unassembled form. We are basing our manual on what we know works, it might not be what your mate says works but we know it does.

The great thing is that you don’t need a MENSA membership or a Rocket Science degree to follow our DF65 rigging guide, you just need a good hour or so of quiet time and a few cups of tea.

Rigging Guide production, including cups of tea and a hammer…you always need a hammer…

I’m hoping to get the guide completed and posted online within the next few days so that you guys can use it to build the shiny new DF65 rigs that you keep buying from us!

Not strictly Soch Sails news but a reminder of other products that we supply and enjoy racing!

Looking at today’s forecast I thought I should dig out my RC Laser and take a trip up to Fleetwood for a round of the National TT series. Having not raced a Laser in nearly a year I wasn’t expecting too much from the day, especially with National Champion Derek Priestley and other top skippers on hand.

Uncle Dereck showed us all how to do it in less than ideal conditions and took the win with 17 points from 11 races. Second place went to none other than me, tied on 21 points with third place finisher Shaun Holbeche, but on count back I scored more top finishes and took the place.

Not a bad return to Laser racing for me and a return to the class that I started radio sailing with four years ago. Not as quick or responsive as most other classes but probably the only true one design radio sailing class out there and one we are proud to supply and race.

Today we’ve sent an order of five A suits of DF65 sails off to a customer far far away, but can you guess where? The clue is in the picture below which shows the suits having a breath of Welsh air before being carefully packed and sent on their way.

Some Sails!

As well as completing this order we found a little time to get down to the marina again and do some sailing, which is always good fun. Today we did some testing on the panelled sails that we gave you a sneaky peek at in the last post. Using the DF65 as a testbed we have been testing our standard single panel A suit sails against a panelled A suit that we have produced. The tuning cycle on the panelled suit is quite different to the single panel suit as the shape is already there with the panelled sails and I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve built and the boat does trap on a bit!

Panelled Sails on a DF65…crikey whatever next!

Whilst totally illegal for the DF65 class the panelled sails will do nicely as a B suit on an RG65 and with some further testing we should get some other sails built and on an RG65 soon enough, which means we’ll need an RG65, which probably means we’ll need to build one. Next weeks project sorted then!

We are busy busy busy at the moment and the with the weather being pretty rubbish round here at the moment it has given us a bit of time to beetle on with some orders. Here is tonight’s work, a full set of A, B and C suits, the A suit is from our film range with the B and C suits coming from our laminate range. Numbers supplied and applied in our A style. Ready to ship out tomorrow to their new owner along with a hull and deck sticker set and some deck patch sets.

A, B & C Suits

Matching Hull & Deck Sticker Set

This week has been a little condensed a we were away during the early part of the week and we returned to some useful orders including one for a set of sails for a different class of yacht, the Wee Nip. The sails are still single panel so didn’t present too much of a challenge however the sail numbers needed to be inked on which isn’t something we’ve done before.

However a quick purchase of some stencil film and a couple of minutes on the cutter and hey presto we’ve sorted it including the class insignia and we are quite pleased with them too, as is the owner!

Wee Nip Sails including inked on numbers.

Because we are happy with the way they look and the ease of production and application we have decided to offer them for sale on our Sail Numbers page which gives you guys more options!

We haven’t had any sailing time this week but we have added some updated photos to our Hull & Deck Sticker page and we have decided that everyone likes a sticker so we’ve added a toolbox sticker to the bottom of each sticker set.

Toolbox sticker complete with application tape, we are good to you!

As well as all this we’ve had a steady flow of orders going out of the door and a busy weekend of sailmaking ahead of us, perhaps if the weather is right we might get out for a spot of sail testing which is exciting as we’ve got some new sails to test that are a bit different to what we’ve done before. Absolutely illegal for a DF65 but very cool if you own an RG65. Not something we’ll be offering until we are happy that we’ve got it right but something we are quite excited about!

Notice anything different about this sail?

Yet again the sun was shining and there was a bit of breeze and even the tide was in so we popped along to the marina and got on with some sailing. After selling GBR 199 a few weeks back I finally got round to making myself an A suit to use and the wind was about right for it.

I have added some draft stripes to this one as I wanted to see how different settings affected the sail shape which is quite a tough job on these boats at any sort of distance. Some useful info was gained and a beer was had after an hour or two on the water!

There are certainly worse places to go sailing, Pwllheli Marina and the new Plas Heli Welsh National Sailing Academy venue is hosting a number of great events this year including the Optimist Europeans next week.

Today we decided to have a bit of a break from everything and we took Mrs Boatyard out for a spot of lunch. It’s the first time in 6 months that we’ve had any time together as she has been in hospital so we celebrated our anniversary at an amazing seafood restaurant overlooking the Menai Straits.

Once home I took some time to look at different ways of getting our manufacturers logo onto our sails so that it stands out a bit more. Here’s what I came up with, looks pretty sharp I reckon!